The Simplicity Linux project is based on LXPup and antiX and ships with LXDE as the default desktop environment. The project has announced a new release, Simplicity Linux 16.07. The new version is available in three editions: Desktop, Mini and X. "We are pleased to announce the release of Simplicity Linux 16.07. As with recent versions of Simplicity, Mini and Desktop are based on the excellent LXPup and uses LXDE as the desktop environment. However, as an experiment, X is based on Debian via the fantastic antiX distro. It uses LXDE as the desktop environment like Mini and Desktop, but as far as features go, it is closer to Mini." This new experiment with Debian based packages may spread to the rest of the editions in the future: "As mentioned earlier, you can test our most experimental version of Simplicity Linux to date, X 16.07. This version is still in the very early stages of development. It is based on the excellent antiX, which in turn is Debian based. Whilst we still have a lot of love for Puppy Linux and all its derivatives, sometimes it's hard to make certain packages work, especially newer packages." The release announcement has further details. Download (MD5):1607Desktop.iso (400MB), 16.07MiniRC1.iso (328MB), X1607Final2.iso (555MB, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

Alan Baghumian has announced the release of Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10. This new version is still based on Debian's current stable branch, but it comes the very latest GNOME 3.20 desktop, as well as a specially compiled Linux kernel 4.4. From the release announcement: "Hello everybody, we are pleased to announce that the final version of Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10, code name 'Erik', is available now. This version ships with GNOME 3.20.3, a new kernel based on Linux 4.4.16 and tons of updated and upgraded packages. Parsix 8.10 has been built on top of the rock-solid Debian 8.0 'Jessie' platform and all base packages have been synchronized with Debian 'Jessie' repositories as of July 30, 2016. Parsix 'Erik' ships with the LibreOffice 4.3.3 productivity suit by default. Highlights: GNOME Shell 3.20.3, GRUB 2, Firefox 47.0.1, GParted 0.19.0, Empathy 3.12.12, LibreOffice 4.3.3, VirtualBox 4.3.36 and a brand new kernel based on Linux 4.4.16 with TuxOnIce, BFS and other extra patches. The live DVD has been compressed using SquashFS and xz." See also the release notes for further details. Download the live DVD image from SourceForge: parsix_8.10r0-amd64.iso (1,244MB, MD5, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

Adrian Gibanel has announced the availability of a new development snapshot of Rescatux, a Debian-based live CD with specialist utilities designed for rescuing broken Linux systems and fixing boot problems: "Rescatux 0.40 beta 7 has been released. This release provides minor fixes on UEFI boot. Some people had problems with Rescatux 0.40b6 not booting in UEFI mode (non-Secure Boot UEFI mode). I suspect those people could boot from Rescatux 0.40b5. So now they should be able to boot from Rescatux 0.40b7. As I already mentioned in 0.40b6, Rescatux does not support Secure Boot yet. The reason is we are going to rely on the Debian-CD team work inside Debian itself and they have not finished it yet. I am trying to polish this work so that it finally makes it into Debian. It's not obvious as it would seem originally with the current live-build framework based on Bash (live-build UEFI boot support bug). If you have a UEFI boot-only system, feedback is welcome." Continue to the release announcement for more information and a detailed changelog. Download: rescatux-0.40b7.iso (608MB, MD5, pkglist).

Ronnie Whisler has announced the availability of LXLE 16.04.1, a new major release from the distribution project that builds a lightweight Ubuntu-based variant with LXDE as the default desktop. This is the distribution's first stable release based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS: "LXLE 16.04.1 'Eclectica' released. LXLE is built upon Ubuntu Mini LTS releases. Lubuntu core is used as a starting point. This version is based on 16.04.1. All software has been updated to their latest stable versions available for Ubuntu 16.04.1. Added PPAs ensure up-to-date applications of some of the most popular software, such as LibreOffice. Overall the applications have been streamlined and slimmed down, even with the inclusion of three small Assistive Technology programs, like a magnifier and onscreen keyboard. This version of LXLE was pretty difficult. A number of GNOME applications had to be replaced with their MATE twin applications to maintain a consistent user interface. Programs and solutions had to come from many different sources. A very eclectic OS, hence the name, Eclectica." See the complete release announcement for more information and screenshots. Download: lxle-eclectica-16.04.1.iso (1,371MB, MD5, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

Endian has announced the release of Endian Firewall 3.2.1, the first stable build in the 3.2 series of the project's CentOS-based Linux distribution designed for firewall and routers. Besides improvements in hardware support and, the new release also brings a number of security updates: "The Endian team is proud to announce the Endian Firewall Community 3.2.1 'countdown' release. Check out the new release today by downloading the ISO image. If you have a 3.2.0beta1 you can just register and run the updates (upgrade from 2.5 or 3.0 is not supported). The registration procedure is much easier now: follow the initial wizard and just with an e-mail address you can keep the system updated. Here's a short list of the newly implemented features: 64-bit CPU support; new 4.1 kernel; Python updated to version 2.7; extended hardware support through updated drivers; extended 3G modem support; security fixes." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. The new installation CD image is available for download (MD5) from SourceForge: efw_community-x64_3.2.1.iso (334MB, pkglist).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third beta build of FreeBSD 11.0, the project's new major release scheduled for final release in September: "The third BETA build of the 11.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available. A summary of changes since 11.0-BETA2 includes: improvements to libunwind; updates to locales; increase the vt(4) framebuffer maximum size; bsdinstall(8) updates to prompt for the date and time during install, as well as prompting to enable various system hardening tuning options; various other updates and fixes. A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/11 release notes. Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be updated on an ongoing basis as the 11.0-RELEASE cycle progresses." Here is the full release announcement as published on the "freebsd-stable" mailing list. Download: FreeBSD-11.0-BETA3-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,807MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-11.0-BETA3-i386-dvd1.iso (2,530MB, SHA512).

Jos Schellevis has announced the release of OPNsense 16.7, a FreeBSD-based specialist operating system designed for firewalls and routers: "It is time for the next major iteration in open-source security. After 6 months and 20 minor releases we hereby declare the general availability of OPNsense 16.7, nick-named 'Dancing Dolphin'. The highlights of this major release include: Suricata 3.1.1 with Intel Hyperscan support; NetFlow-based reporting and export; traffic shaping using CoDel / FQ-CoDel; two-factor authentication based on RFC 6238 (TOTP); HTTPS and ICAP support in the proxy server; FreeBSD 10.3 with full integration of HardenedBSD ASLR; UEFI boot and installation modes; substantial updates to our language packs: Japanese, Russian, German, French, Chinese. Attention: an incompatibility in Chrome may prevent the firmware update from running. Try a different browser to upgrade to 16.7 where a workaround has been added to avoid the problem in the future." Read the complete release announcement which includes a list of all the recent changes. Download: OPNsense-16.7-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2 (219MB, SHA256), OPNsense-16.7-OpenSSL-cdrom-i386.iso.bz2 (201MB, SHA256).

Jeff Hoogland has announced the availability of the initial alpha build of Bodhi Linux 4.0.0, an upcoming major release of the Ubuntu-based distribution featuring a modified variant of the Enlightenment desktop called Moksha. This alpha build is available for 64-bit computers only: "Not only is our first 4.0.0 alpha release here, but it is here relatively on schedule. If all goes according to plan we will have something stamped as stable before September hits. I would just like to be clear that this is far from a polished or finished product. This release has the following known issues: no bootsplash; the installer brings up a password prompt, just click OK to continue; some extra menu entries are present, feel free to manually remove them; many others I have yet to find. This release is also only coming in 64-bit flavoring. The final Bodhi 4.0.0 release will include 32-bit and non-PAE releases still. Hopefully, with the beta release early next month I will have these other variations put together." Read the release announcement for further information. The Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 alpha live DVD image is available for download from SourceForge: bodhi-4.0.0-64-alpha.iso (674MB, SHA256, pkglist).

Chris Buechler has announced the release of pfSense 2.3.2, a new stable version in the 2.3 branch of the project's FreeBSD-based operating system for firewalls and routers: "We are happy to announce the release of pfSense software version 2.3.2. This is a maintenance release in the 2.3.x series, bringing a number of bug fixes. It includes fixes for 60 bugs, 8 features and 2 to-do items completed. As always, you can upgrade from any prior version directly to 2.3.2. While nearly all of the common regressions between 2.2.6 and 2.3-RELEASE have been fixed in subsequent releases, the following still exist: IPsec IPComp does not work and is disabled by default, however in 2.3.1 it is automatically not enabled to avoid encountering this problem; IGMP Proxy does not work with VLAN interfaces and possibly other edge cases, this is a little-used component; those using IPsec and OpenBGPD may have non-functional IPsec unless OpenBGPD is removed." Here is the full release announcement, with further information available on the features and changes page. Download: pfSense-CE-2.3-RELEASE-amd64.iso.gz (297MB, SHA256), pfSense-CE-2.3.2-RELEASE-i386.iso.gz (282MB, SHA256). Also available from OSDisc.

The development of the upcoming major version of FreeBSD, whose final release is scheduled for early September, continues at a fast pace. Although delayed by a week, the 11.0-BETA2 build was finally announced yesterday: "The second BETA build of the 11.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available. A summary of changes since 11.0-BETA1 includes: several build- and toolchain-related fixes; WITNESS and INVARIANTS have been disabled on powerpc, powerpc64, arm and armv6 architectures; freebsd-update(8) has been updated to allow '*-dbg' distribution sets; ctld(8) no longer exits when reloading the configuration with invalid initiator-portal clauses; GENERIC-NODEBUG kernel configurations have been removed; the callout code has been updated to avoid a system panic with TCP timers; several other changes." See also the (incomplete) release notes which are still work-in-progress. Quick links to download the amd64 and i386 installation DVD images: FreeBSD-11.0-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,479MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-11.0-BETA2-i386-dvd1.iso (2,203MB, SHA512).

The KaOS project, which provides a rolling release distribution with the latest available KDE software, has released a new snapshot. KaOS 2016.07, provides fresh installation media for the rolling-release distribution. The new snapshot features KDE's Plasma 5.7 desktop environment and packages built with version 5 of the GNU Compiler Collection. "KaOS is proud to present the 2016.07 ISO. The policy is, once a first pacman -Syu becomes a major update, it is time for a new ISO image so new users are not faced with a difficult first update. With all the needed rebuilds for the move to GCC 5, most systems will see 70 - 80% of their install replaced by new packages so a new ISO is more than due. The Plasma Desktop includes Frameworks 5.24.0, Plasma 5.7.2, KDE Applications 16.04.3 and not yet released ports of KDE Applications. All built on Qt 5.7.0." The new snapshot features encryption support in the system installer and version 4.6.4 of the Linux kernel. The release announcement and release notes contain further details. Download (MD5): KaOS-2016.07-x86_64.iso (1,781MB, pkglist)

Ludwig Nussel has announced the availability of the third alpha build of openSUSE 42.2, the upcoming new stable release from one of the oldest Linux distributions that's still going strongly today: "openSUSE 42.2 alpha 3 is on the mirrors. The merge of SLE 12 SP2 core components is basically done now. Since SLE enters release candidate phase now we won't see many updates coming from there any more. So even though it's called alpha 3 we are on a pretty solid base already. Among the countless leaf package updates, big changes since alpha 2 were completing the GNOME update, the integration of KDE Plasma 5.7 and TeX Live 2015. So time to put alpha 3 under stress, test it in real-world scenarios and file good bug reports! There will be a follow-up to this mail with a test plan for manual testing. We have five weeks now to get in shape for beta 1. There are quite some things to do." Read the full release announcement for more details. Download the installation DVD image from here: openSUSE-Leap-42.2-DVD-x86_64-Build0109-Media.iso (4,432MB, SHA256, pkglist).

Kate Lebedeff has announced the release of a new development snapshot for the OpenMandriva distribution. The new release candidate, OpenMandriva 3.0 RC1, introduces Chinese and Japanese translations, offers 32-bit (i586) support and fixes bugs in the GnuPG package. "Work for the RC1 has further improved stability and performance. We have now support for the Japanese and Chinese languages so we would really welcome any feedback from those who speak them. The RC1 brings a number of major fixes: i586 release now available; install with Calamares now functional so no longer necessary to install through live image; a longstanding GnuGP bug has been fixed. OpenMandriva is a cutting edge distribution compiled with LLVM/Clang. Combined with the high level of optimization used for both code and linking (by enabling LTO) used in its building, this gives the OpenMandriva desktop an unbelievably crisp response to operations on the KDE Plasma 5 desktop which makes it a pleasure to use." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement. Download (MD5): OpenMandrivaLx.3.0-RC1-PLASMA.x86_64.iso (1,863MB, torrent, pkglist).

The Korora distribution is a desktop oriented operating system built on Fedora. The Korora project has announced the availability of Korora 24 which is based on Fedora 24. The new version of Korora is available in four editions: Cinnamon, GNOME, MATE and Xfce. "Changes in Korora 24: Images are 64-bit only, 32-bit users can still upgrade. Over the last few versions the demand for 32-bit ISOs has markedly decreased to the point where we feel it's no-longer necessary to provide install images for the platform. Starting with Korora 24, images will be 64-bit (x86_64) only, however those who have 32-bit systems already are still able to upgrade to Korora 24. If you have been running 32-bit Korora on 64 bit hardware we strongly encourage you to install the 64-bit version instead. No KDE Plasma release yet. We would dearly love to have a KDE iso ready to go, but we ran into a number of issues and decided to not let this hold up the release of Korora 24. It is possible to upgrade a Korora 23 install of KDE to Korora 24 however there are some settings such as themes may need to be manually set up again." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement. Download (SHA256) (pkglist): korora-24-x86_64-cinnamon.iso (1,990MB), korora-24-x86_64-gnome.iso (2,068MB), korora-24-x86_64-mate.iso (2,052MB), korora-24-x86_64-xfce.iso (2,086MB)

Matthias Klumpp has announced the availability of the first beta release of Tanglu 4.0, an upcoming new version of the project's Debian-based distribution with a choice of GNOME or KDE Plasma desktops: "We are pleased to announce the release of the second development version of Tanglu 4, which includes the KDE, GNOME and Core flavors. This beta release contains many changes - most notably, imports from Debian are frozen now and we ship with our final versions of KDE and GNOME. It also contains the following highlights: systemd 229, Linux kernel 4.6, KDE Plasma 5.6, GNOME 3.20. We are planning to update MESA to 12.0 and also update the kernel prior to doing the final release of Tanglu 4. When testing Tanglu 4 beta, please keep in mind that it is a development snapshot release and it still contains rough edges. As always, we ship with fewer packages than Debian due to reduced manpower and transitions that have been done." Read the full release announcement for further information. Download (SHA256, pkglist): tanglu-dasyatis-beta1-gnome-live-amd64.hybrid.iso (1,303MB), tanglu-dasyatis-beta1-kde-live-amd64.hybrid.iso (1,357MB).

Development Release: elementary OS 0.4 Beta 2^Daniel Foré has announced the availability of the second beta build of elementary OS 0.4, the project's upcoming new release of the Ubuntu-based distribution featuring a custom desktop called "Pantheon": "Loki beta 2 is here. Even though it has only been a short month since beta 1, we've already fixed over 70 issues that testers have reported to us. Beta 1 testers, make sure to run your updates to receive the following fixes plus everything else listed on this page: preview window on video's navigation bar make HD videos lag/freeze; no window decorations in the installer; after updating, the Update button still appears beside updated applications; incorrect position of date and time in the greeter; switch to disable animations in Universal Access settings; panel does not reposition on primary screen changes. Some of the fixes listed are configuration changes and will not be available to beta 1 testers as updates." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: elementaryos-0.4-beta2-amd64.20160716.iso (1,253MB, pkglist).

Alessio Fattorini has announced the first beta release of NethServer 7.2. The new version, NethServer 7.2 beta 1, offers a number of changes, including improving and streamlining the network settings pages in the distribution's web interface. "The first beta release of NethServer 7 will bring numerous goodies: a new look that differentiates it from the NethServer 6 family, a brand new Virtual Host panel for easy management of the web server configuration, the ability to configure a Green interface in DHCP mode, refactoring of the 'Shared Folder' page with Virtual Hosts and Active Directory Domain Controller role in mind. MultiWan configuration is now merged into the Network page, the Certificate Management panel lets you edit the default self-signed certificates or upload a custom one from an SSL certificate provider. We have simplified Network Services management and new services Rules are added directly from the Firewall panel. There is a ton of major changes from alpha and it's impossible to cover them all in detail here. The release announcement and release notes have more details. Download: nethserver-7.2.1511-beta1-x86_64.iso (748MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

The Untangle NG Firewall distribution is a firewall solution based on Debian. It offers pluggable modules for network applications, including spam blocking, web filtering, anti-virus, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention and VPN. The latest release, Untangle NG Firewall 12.1, offers a number of interface updates as well as geolocation data for all network traffic. "In addition to the user interface enhancements, NG Firewall version 12.1 provides new geolocation capabilities for all traffic. NG Firewall's Integrated Rules Engine can utilize geolocation data to allow network administrators to create and apply rules based on client or server latitude and longitude or country. This enables network administrators to quickly triangulate where a threat is originating and create an appropriate policy response. Geolocation data is also available in NG Firewall's reports and widgets." For additional information, please see the distribution's release announcement. Download (MD5): untangle_1210_x64.iso (547MB, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

The IPFire project has announced a new update to the distribution's 2.19 series. The new version, IPFire 2.19 Core 103, features updates to the Squid proxy service, ClamAV anti-virus software and Tor networking software. "The web proxy Squid has been updated to the 3.5 series and various improvements for stability and performance were made. On machines with slow hard disks or on installations with very large caches it was likely to happen that the cache index got corrupted when the proxy was shut down. This resulted in an unstable web proxy after the next start. The shutdown routine was improved so that a cache index corruption is now very unlikely. Additionally we have means installed that allow us to detect if the cache index was corrupted and if so have it automatically rebuilt at the next start. This update will delete the presumably corrupted index on all installations and start a rebuild of the index, which could result in slow operation of the proxy for a short time after installing the update. Details can be found in the project's release announcement. Download (SHA1): ipfire-2.19.x86_64-full-core103.iso (160MB, torrent, pkglist).

Following the release of KDE's Plasma Desktop 5.7 earlier today, a new version of KDE neon is now also available. KDE neon is distribution based on the latest stable Kubuntu, but it is developed at a more rapid pace and it features a cutting-edge desktop stack, including the latest Plasma. From the release announcement: "KDE neon 5.7. When version numbers merge to a singularity we reach the perfection that is KDE neon 5.7. Featuring the newly released Qt 5.7 and the freshly built KDE Plasma 5.7. If you're using KDE neon 'User' edition you can just update as normal. Those who have yet to allow it to take over their computer can download the images to fix that pronto." KDE Plasma 5.7 delivers a large number of improvements, including better support for kiosk, much improved integration with the Wayland windowing system and a new system tray and task manager; see the Plasma 5.7 announcement for further details and screenshots. KDE neon 5.7 is available for x86_64 systems only. Download link: neon-useredition-20160705-0929-amd64.iso (959MB, SHA256, signature, pkglist).

OPNsense is a FreeBSD-based project designed to be run on firewalls and routers. The OPNsense team has released a new development snapshot, OPNsense 16.7-RC1. The new testing release offers SSL fingerprinting, monitoring CPU temperature through the System Health page, HTTPS proxy support and NTP can be disabled as needed. This release also features HardenedBSD's ASLR implementation for improved memory security. "It has been 5 months since 16.1 came out. Since then, over 1500 commits and 18 stable releases have continuously improved and enhanced the project. Since then, thousands of new users have joined. And, since then, our new documentation has been extended and tweaked with numerous guides, explanations and answers to your questions. The cumulation of these efforts is this announcement of the first release candidate for 16.7. Images are being provided to encourage to try these in a fresh setting, but the configuration import in the installer and the GUI work as usual so that migration is simple." A complete list of changes can be found in the project's release announcement. Download: OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2 (224MB, SHA256).

Ron Henderson has announced the release of Network Security Toolkit (NST) 24-7977, the latest version of the project's Fedora-based distribution featuring a large collection of network security applications: "We are pleased to announce the latest NST release - 'NST 24 SVN:7977'. This release is based on Fedora 24 using Linux Kernel 4.6.3. This release brings the NST distribution on par with Fedora 24. Here are some of the highlights for this release: NST will now be delivered as a 64-bit image only, 32 bit images have been retired; a new multi-traceroute (MTR) networking tool has been developed for NST 24, this tool provides an interactive traceroute visual using Scapy; a new interactive 3D pie chart depicting the results from a ntop Deep Packet Inspection (nDPI) is now an integral part of the NST WUI Network Packet Capture protocol decode; added the SSLyze project for analyzing a server's SSL configuration to the NST Networking Tools Widget; a darkness/lightness Google Map control has been added the NST Map Tools...." Read the full release announcement for more details. Download (MD5): nst-24-7977.x86_64.iso (2,680MB, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

Robert Lange has announced the availability of the first beta release of the upcoming VectorLinux 7.2, a Slackware-based distribution with a choice of Xfce ("Standard" edition) and IceWM ("Light" edition) desktop user interfaces: "VectorLinux is proud to announce the first beta release of the 7.2 version of its Standard and Light editions. The release features Light a minimal desktop using IceWM and SeaMonkey as its base of operation. The standard version is Xfce-based with the latest Firefox as the browser. Both versions can be installed with our semi automatic GUI installer or via a text-based installer, depending on your needs. We feature all the latest Linux software from Kodi to LibreOffice, all easily installed with our GUI or text-based package manager. We are using the latest 4.4.14 LTS kernel for the best hardware support and system speed. Last note for the diehards - we are systemd-free." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: VL64-7.2-STD-B1.iso (793MB, MD5), VL64-7.2-LIGHT-B1.iso (693MB, MD5).

Laura Arjona Reina has announced the release of a new major version of Debian Edu/Skolelinux, a Debian-based distribution tailored to educational institutions, computer labs and school networks. Labeled as version 8+edu0, this is the project's first stable release based on the Debian 8.0: "The Debian Edu developer team is happy to announce Debian Edu 8+edu0 'Jessie', the latest Debian Edu / Skolelinux release, entirely based on Debian 8 update 8.5. Upgrades from previous beta releases of Debian Edu 'Jessie' to this release are possible and encouraged. New features for Debian Edu 8+edu0 'Jessie': if a system is installed via network boot the firmware for the hardware present is now installed automatically; MATE 1.8 is now available as optional desktop environment; in addition, a Dutch translation of the manual is available, and the Norwegian Bokmål one is now complete." Read the rest of the release announcement which provides several real-life usage examples from schools in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Download (SHA1) options include a 5 GB installation DVD/USB image and a much smaller CD/USB "netinstall" file: debian-edu-8+edu0-USB.iso (4,996MB, pkglist), debian-edu-8+edu0-CD.iso (653MB).

Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced the availability of Zenwalk Linux 8.0, a major new release of the project's Slackware-based distribution with Xfce as the default desktop and a number user-friendly enhancements: "Zenwalk is back after a long development blackout, with the latest best-of-breed software (LibreOffice 5.1.3, Chromium 51, MPlayer 1.3, FFmpeg 3.0.1), the latest Slackware base system featuring the Linux kernel 4.4.14 and a new desktop layout for the user-friendly Xfce 4.12.1. Zenwalk 8.0 is a 'less than 1 GB ISO image' pure Slackware system with added post-install configurations, optimizations and tunings already done out of the box, with a ready-to-use polished desktop environment, added graphical system tools, added office and multimedia applications, and striped to keep just 'one application per task'. Beginning with 8.0, Zenwalk is a 64-bit only Linux distribution. As it is hard to find 32-bits CPUs nowadays, I believe that the old 32-bit architecture is for small specialized systems only, not for the desktop." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and a screenshot. Download the installation DVD image from here: zenwalk-8.0.iso (989MB, MD5, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

The Slackware project has announced a new stable release of the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution. The new version, Slackware Linux 14.2, ships with Linux kernel version 4.4, KDE 4.14, Xfce 4.12 and the 64-bit build of Slackware supports booting on UEFI-enabled hardware. "Slackware 14.2 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.12.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.14.21 (KDE 4.14.3 with kdelibs 4.14.21) a stable release of the 4.14.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment. These desktops use eudev, udisks, and udisks2, and many of the specifications from freedesktop.org which allow the system administrator to grant use of various hardware devices according to users' group membership so that they will be able to use items such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that appear like USB storage, portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players, and more, all without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command." Additional information can be found in the project's detailed release announcement. Download: slackware64-14.2-install-dvd.iso (2,645MB, MD5, signature, torrent, pkglist). Also available from OSDisc.

The developers of blackPanther OS, a Hungarian distribution that was originally forked from Mandriva Linux, have announced the launch of blackPanther OS 14.1. The blackPanther distribution ships with the KDE 4 desktop and offers users a unified settings panel that combines KDE's System Settings and Mandriva's Control Centre. "We are sure you’ll enjoy the many improvements. We’ve done our best to bring the latest technology to blackPanther while still maintaining the stability and security that you have come to expect. blackPanther OS is well known for its simplicity and the fact that we try to bring software to you in the condition that the authors intended. blackPanther OS v14.1 (Walking Dead) brings many updates and enhancements, KDE 4.14, a recent stable release of the 4.1x.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment." Further information is available in the project's release announcement (English, Hungarian). Download: blackPantherOS-v14.1-WalkingDead-i586-CD.iso (670MB, MD5, pkglist).

Oracle has announced the release of Oracle Linux 6.7, the latest release of the distribution's legacy branch based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7: "We're happy to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 6 Update 7, the seventh update release for Oracle Linux 6. You can find the individual RPM packages on the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) and our public yum repository and ISO installation images are available for download from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. Notable features in this release include: Open Security Content Automation Protocol (OpenSCAP), including the oscap utility for enhanced security auditing and compliance; Load Balancing and High Availability with Keepalived and HAProxy, supported under Oracle Linux Premier Support subscriptions; enhanced SSSD support for Active Directory, including dynamic updates to DNS, group and user lookups of NetBIOS names, site discovery of domain controllers...." See the release announcement for more information. Download: OracleLinux-R6-U7-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso (3,733MB, SHA1, pkglist).

The developers of Elive, a commercial distribution based on Debian which features the Enlightenment desktop, have released a new test release. Elive 2.6.8 Beta offers better touchpad support, fixes large fonts when using some NVIDIA video cards and makes Zsh the default command line shell. The release announcement contains the following list of changes and improvements: "Huge fonts with NVIDIA cards fixed. Much improved touchpad default configurations. Internet configuration widget is now static in the desktop so the users won't miss it. Zsh shell by default, with a ton of amazing features included, we configured it to keep a maximum compatibility with the bash shell so that the users won't see any difference, if you don't know Zsh think about it like a much more powerful bash shell, it includes a small demo to help have an idea of its powerful features. A lot of fixes in the internal Elive tools. Improved auto-detected configurations. Lots of small fixes and improvements in the installer. Skype audio works again by using ALSA if you run it from the menus." Download: elive_2.6.8_beta_hybrid.iso (2,429MB, MD5, pkglist).

Kai Hendry has announced the release of Webconverger 31.0, the latest update of the project's specialist Linux distribution for web kiosks: "Webconverger 31 release. Two months ago was our momentous Jessie-based Webconverger 30 release and since then we've: fixed an issue with printing; pushed Firefox 39; further locked down some new Mozilla anti-features like social services, pocket and hello URLs; received a fantastic endorsement from the (Internet) famous security pundit SwiftOnSecurity. What next? We could really do with your feedback, help and support on a couple of goals for the next release: making wireless setups easier; improve boot times; perhaps work on efficient sharing a single machine with multiseat if there is a demand for it. Managed to integrate the EETI eGalaxTouch driver for some models of resistive touchscreens. It works well as your can see by this touch screen demo video and it's typically deployed in point of sales in retail. Unfortunately the driver is in a private branch since the end user of license is very limited and a good case study of how not to write a license." Here is the full release announcement. Download: webc-31.0.iso (409MB, SHA1, pkglist).

Alan Baghumian has announced the availability of a second test release of Parsix GNU/Linux 8.0. The new development release, which carries the version number 8.0-TEST2, is based on Debian 8 "Jessie" and offers users UEFI support along with up to date versions of the GNOME desktop, LibreOffice and popular web browsers. "Parsix GNU/Linux 8.0 (code name Mumble) brings stable GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, a brand new kernel and an updated installer. This version has been synchronized with Debian Jessie repositories as of July 25, 2015. Parsix Mumble ships with GNOME 3.16 and LibreOffice 4.3.3 productivity suit by default. Highlights: Updated installer system with better UEFI support, GNOME Shell 3.16.3, GRUB 2, GNU Iceweasel (Firefox) 39.0, GParted 0.19.0, Empathy 3.12.10, LibreOffice 4.3.3, VirtualBox 4.3.28 and a kernel based on Linux 4.0.9 with TuxOnIce 3.3, BFS and other extra patches. Live DVD has been compressed using SquashFS and XZ." Additional details are available in the project's release notes. Download: parsix_8.0-TEST-2-amd64.iso (1,241MB, MD5, pkglist).

Soren Jacobsen has announced the availability of the second release candidate for the upcoming NetBSD 7.0: "On behalf of the NetBSD project, it is my pleasure to announce the second release candidate of NetBSD 7.0. Some of the changes since 7.0_RC1 are: OpenSSL updated to 1.0.1p; BIND updated to 9.10.2-P2; IPSEC support is now included by default in Xen kernels; fix several security issues in calendar(1); installboot(8) now supports wedge names; fix a quota panic when using WAPBL (PR 49948); fix a memory leak in the drm2 code; avoid an X crash on i915 DRMKMS; add a postinstall(8) check to ensure that /etc/man.conf reflects the modern mandoc world (PR 50020); add a postinstall(8) check to ensure that /etc/fonts/fonts.conf is up to date; tset(1) - fix handling of the erase character; gdb(1) - fix attaching to a running process again after previously detaching; NPF - handle unregistered interfaces correctly; npfctl(8) - fix a NULL dereference...." Read the release announcement for further details. Installation CD images are available for several dozens of architectures; here are the quick links to download the amd64 and i386 images (MD5): NetBSD-7.0_RC2-amd64.iso (372MB), NetBSD-7.0_RC2-i386.iso (405MB).

Robert Lange has announced the release of VectorLinux 7.1 "Light" edition, a Slackware-based distribution featuring the lightweight IceWM window manager: "Vector Linux Light 7.1 is released and available for download. The 'lightness' of this edition is relative to our Standard edition, and is achieved by using the lightweight IceWM window manager in place of the Xfce desktop environment. You may also choose bare-bones X Window with just TWM. Otherwise the base system and installation experience is the same as Standard. IceWM is old school. It uses a manual approach, much like a stick shift instead of an automatic transmission. It doesn't change unless you tell it to. Configuration is managed by editing plain text files. To make things easier and get you started, some of the most common tweaks are also scripted and controllable by a GUI app. The target audience consists of those who like and prefer IceWM, owners of older computers, and users who want a minimal, yet functional starting point for their own creation. Minimum recommended hardware: an Intel Core class CPU, 1 GB of RAM, and 10 GB of drive space." Here is the brief release announcement. Download the installation CD image from here: VL64-7.1-LIGHT.iso (618MB, MD5), VL-7.1-LIGHT.iso (618MB, MD5). Also available from OSDisc.

Chris Buechler has announced the release of pfSense 2.2.4, a FreeBSD-based firewall solution. The new release mostly includes bug fixes and security updates. The bug fixes include patches to prevent cross-site scripting attacks against the web interface, a fix for a TCP resource exhaustion attack and enhancements to prevent file corruption during unclean shutdowns. Buechler points out that a recent patch to FreeBSD's OpenSSL implementation was not needed as pfSense did not ship the vulnerable version of the OpenSSL software. "As always, you can upgrade from any previous version straight to 2.2.4. For those already running any 2.2.x version, this is a low risk upgrade. This is a high priority upgrade for those using IPsec on 2.2.x versions. For those on 2.1.x or earlier versions, there are a number of significant changes which may impact you." The release announcement has more details and a full list of changes since the last version of pfSense can be found in the New Features and Changes document. Download: pfSense-LiveCD-2.2.4-RELEASE-amd64.iso.gz (99MB, SHA256).

Ekaterina Lopukhova has announced the release of ROSA R6 "Desktop Fresh" edition, a desktop Linux distribution featuring a customised KDE 4.14.8 desktop: "The ROSA company gladly presents ROSA Desktop Fresh R6, the number 6 in the 'R' lineup of the free ROSA distributions with the KDE desktop as the main graphical environment. As always, the distro presents a vast collection of games and emulators and the Steam platform package along with a standard suite of audio and video communications software including the newest version of Skype. All modern video formats are supported. The distribution includes the fresh LibreOffice version, the full TeX suite for true nerds as well, along with best Linux desktop publishing, text editing and WYSISYG software. The LAMP/C++/ environment packages are waiting to be installed by true hackers. The distribution is based on the ROSA 2014.1 platform which includes two years support (till Q3 of 2016). A few more releases based on this platform are expected to be presented for the users in the future." See the release notes for more information and a list of package updates. Download: ROSA.FRESH.KDE.R6.x86_64.iso (1,835MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

Glen Barber has announced that the first release candidate for the upcoming FreeBSD 10.2 is now ready for testing: "The first RC build of the 10.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Changes Since 10.2-BETA2: tcpdump(8) has been updated to obtain capsicum(4) rights for dump file rotation; the ixgbe(4) driver has been updated to fix setting sysctl(8) tunable entries in loader.conf(5); the ZFS txg_quiesce() function has been updated to use __noinline(), allowing DTrace monitoring for txg_quiesce() calls; bsdinstall(8) has been updated to align partitions on 1MB boundaries when ZFS is the selected filesystem, as well as a number of other changes, including detecting BIOS versions to determine when the 'active' flag should be set on the boot partition; the quota(1) utility has been updated to support IPv6; the xen(4) netfront interface has been updated to preserve configurations across virtual machine migrations...." Continue to the release announcement to find out more. Download: FreeBSD-10.2-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,615MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (2,432MB, SHA256).

Douglas DeMaio has announced the availability of a test release of the openSUSE distribution's new Leap product branch. The test release, called openSUSE Leap 42.1 Milestone 1, is in the early stages of its development and is intended for alpha testers and people curious as to what openSUSE has planned for the Leap series. Richard Brown, Chairman of the openSUSE Board, says Leap will provide a middle road between SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE's rolling Tumbleweed branch. "As Tumbleweed keeps rolling with the latest features and subsystems, Leap will fill the gap between the longevity of a SLE core and the innovation related to Tumbleweed. The quality and environmental care Tumbleweed provides with its development model should quickly translate to a top-quality distribution for Linux users, sysadmins and developers. The milestone was moving forward with a 3 series Linux Kernel, but the Long-Term Support 4.1 Kernel, which enhances ext4 file-system encryption and power improvements for both ARM and x86 devices, was needed for the release of the first milestone. The new Kernel was practically flawless when added to the next build, which had some minor errors." More information on the test release is available in the project's release announcement. Downloads: openSUSE-42.1-DVD-x86_64-Build0017-Media.iso (3,060MB, SHA256, pkglist).

Red Hat has announced the availability of an updated version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The latest version, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7, provides both updated installation media for Red Hat's customers and a few new features. The release announcement lists some of the new improvements to Red Hat's main product line: "One example is clufter, a tool for analyzing and transforming cluster configuration formats. Available as a technology preview, clufter enables system administrators to update existing high-availability configurations to run on the latest high-availability tools from Red Hat. LVM Cache is now a fully supported feature, allowing users to maximize the performance benefits of SSD-based storage for their business needs while limiting associated costs." The product's release notes include many more details and a list of known issues. The company has also provided a series of more detailed technical notes for people who would like to see changes broken down by package and security advisory.

John Martinson has announced the release of Robolinux 8.1, a major new release of the distribution that features an optional (and commercial) virtual machine pack for running Windows alongside Robolinux. This is the first version based on Debian GNU/Linux 8 "Jessie", with the only available desktop environment being Cinnamon. From the release announcement: "Robolinux is pleased and excited to announce its brand new Robolinux 'Cinnamon Raptor' version 8.1 LTS 2020 OS which is based on the rock-solid Debian 8 stable source code sporting the 3.16 Linux kernel. It has far better graphics and audio quality, boots up and runs much faster than Debian 7 and is also compatible with newer hardware, drivers and most notably the Intel Haswell chipset. Robolinux Cinnamon Raptor user interface is extremely fast, beautiful and very easy to use. An enormous amount of time and effort went into optimizing and tweaking Robolinux so that Linux beginners and advanced users will be very pleased. For example we fixed the Debian 8.1 update notifier issue. As usual, both the 32-bit and 64-bit variants come with dozens of one-click WiFi, video and printer driver installers. A completely new Stealth VM was written capable of running Windows 10 virus-free inside Robolinux." Download the live DVD image from here: robolinux64-live-cinnamon-v8.1.iso (1,993MB).

The developers of Calculate Linux have announced the release of a new edition of the Gentoo-based distribution. The new desktop branch of Calculate features the MATE desktop environment. "We are very happy that such a wonderful project as GNOME 2 is not dead and continues its development under a new name. We have long been eyeing the project, and finally decided to release a new distribution with it. Meet Calculate Linux Desktop MATE (CLDM), the third in our family of desktop Calculate Linux provides full-time jobs in the office and at home. Desktop customization: traditionally made in the style of Calculate Linux. It's integrated to work with the server Calculate Directory Server. The software includes an office suite LibreOffice 4.4.3.2, web browser Chromium 43.0.2357.130, email client Claws-Mail 3.11.1, the message manager Pidgin 2.10.11, the editor GIMP 2.8.14, video player SMplayer 14.9.0, audio player Clementine 1.2.3 and other software, including the standard applications of MATE 1.8. Distribution uses common repository of binary packages, which today has more than 1,800 pieces, as well as Portage, being backward compatible with Gentoo." The new edition is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. Further information and screen shots can be found in the release announcement. Downloads: cldm-14.16.2-x86_64.iso (1,814MB, torrent, pkglist).

The developers of Neptune, a desktop oriented distribution based on Debian, have announced the launch of Neptune 4.4. The new release updates several key components, including parts of the graphics stack, offering better video card support and better performance. Improvements have also been introduced to the partition manager, enabling users to manipulate btrfs volumes. "This version features a new LTS kernel 3.18.16 which delivers better and more modern hardware support. We also did the biggest update in the graphics stack since Neptune 4.0 by upgrading to X.Org Server 1.17 and Mesa 10.5.8. This brings in support for modern graphic cards and better 3D performance. Old chips like voodoo or sis however aren't supported any more. We updated the HPlip driver to support newer HP printers. We improved the user interface by introducing a new modern looking font as well as bigger scrollbars." Additional information and screen shots are available in the project's release announcement. Download (MD5): Neptune44.iso (1,876MB, torrent, pkglist).

Stefan Gronewold has announced the launch of Pisi Linux 1.2. Pisi Linux is a modern distribution which originally forked from Pardus Linux, but which is now maintained independently. Pisi Linux uses the PiSi package manager and ships with the KDE desktop. The new release is the second update (and final release) of the 1.x series. Version 1.2 ships with a number of significant package upgrades, including a new Linux kernel, a copy of Qt 5, MATE 1.8.0 and version 4.14 of the KDE desktop environment. Currently, Pisi Linux 1.2 is available in one, desktop-oriented edition with the KDE desktop acting as the default user interface. Other major components of Pisi Linux 1.2 include Mozilla Firefox 38.0.5, LibreOffice 4.3.5, GIMP 2.8.14, Calligra 2.8.7, Clementine 1.2.3, Qt 4.8.6 and 5.4.1, glibc 2.20, Binutils 2.24 and coreutils 8.23. The Linux kernel is at version 3.19.8. Further information on the new release, along with notes on where to get assistance, can be found in the project's release notes (in Turkish). Download (MD5) the installation DVD image from SourceForge: Pisi-Linux-1.2-KDE-x86_64.iso (1,523MB, torrent, pkglist).

Chih-Wei Huang has announced the release of Android-x86 4.4-r3, the latest update from the project that builds an unofficial port of Google's Android mobile operating system for Intel and AMD x86 processors: "The Android-x86.org is glad to announce the 4.4-r3 release to the public. This is the third stable release Android-x86 4.4 (kitkat-x86). The 4.4-r3 release is based on the Android 4.4.4_r2.0.1 (KTU84Q) release. We have fixed and added x86-specific code to let the system run smoothly on x86 platforms, especially on tablets and netbooks. There are a lot of improvements since the 4.4-r2 release including: upgrade the kernel to 4.0.8 with more drivers enabled to support modern hardware, Baytrail platform is well supported; replace Bluedroid by the Bluez stack, Bluetooth is more stable and usable, be able to install image and grub2-efi to GPT partitioned disks; add a new HAL sensor to support iio style sensors; update Mesa to 10.5.9, enable hardware acceleration for NVIDIA chips (nouveau) and VMware (vmwgfx)...." Read the detailed release notes for more information and known issues. As SourceForge does not seem to work well at the moment, the installation images have been uploaded to Google Drive (ISO,IMG). Alternatively, they are also available from this unofficial mirror: android-x86-4.4-r3.iso (411MB), android-x86-4.4-r3.img (416MB).

Chromixium OS 1.5, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that attempts to recreate the look and feel of Chrome OS while providing a complete Linux system, has been released: "I am very proud to announce that the first major update to Chromixium is ready for download. This release marked 1.5 is the first stable release to ship with the standard Ubuntu installer. This is the first major update to the 32-bit edition of Chromixium since 1.0 was released. This release brings a raft of improvements: now using the standard Ubuntu (Ubiquity) installer with better language support, hardware detection and support for encrypted home and LVM; rolls up service pack 1 and all upstream updates (including latest Flash and Chromium updates) into a new ISO image; updated X.org, but Linux kernel remains on long-term support 3.13; faster right-click applications menu generation; inclusion of Cardapio menu for a standard dockable menu (find it in the control panel and drag it to the dock)...." See the release announcement for a complete list of changes and screenshot of the default desktop. Download: Chromixium-1.5-i386.iso (803MB, pkglist).

Less than a week after the release of the initial beta, Glen Barber has announced the availability of FreeBSD 10.2-BETA2: "The first BETA build of the 10.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Changes Since 10.2-BETA1: the missing GEOM_LABEL in the GUMSTIX and PANDABOARD kernel configuration files that prevented the '/dev/ufs/rootfs' fstab(5) entry to mount the root filesystem has been fixed; correctly handle rare events of transient write errors to the cylinder group blocks; an incorrect implementation of kvasprintf() in the Linux compatibility and emulation code has been fixed; setting the initial system clock time for systems with a CMOS clock set before the year 2000 has been fixed; the pw(8) utility has been updated to allow creating users with UID 0, in addition to other miscellaneous updates; the MIB names in the 'user' sysctl(3) tree have been fixed to no longer return '0' or empty values...." See the release announcement for a complete list of changes. Download: FreeBSD-10.2-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,602MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-BETA2-i386-dvd1.iso (1,990MB, SHA256).

Yesterday SUSE announced the availability of the fourth service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 "Desktop" and "Server" editions, a set of commercial enterprise-class Linux distributions: "SUSE has made it easier for customers to take advantage of the processing power and innovations of the latest hardware with the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 4. In addition, scalability improvements in SP4 will allow more customers to run large-scale workloads such as in-memory databases on SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. SP4 also upgrades key components in the high availability clustering stack - including pacemaker, booth and ReaR - to the same versions in SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 12. These upgrades allow customers to fully exploit the stack to enhance service availability for mission-critical workloads. SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time Extension, a system specifically engineered to reduce latency and increase the predictability and reliability of time-sensitive, mission-critical applications, is also upgraded." Read the rest of the release announcement and check out the detailed released notes (desktop, server) for further information. The products, supporting five hardware architectures, are available for download for evaluation lasting up to 60 days.

Eric Turgeon has announced that the second beta build of GhostBSD 10.1, an upcoming new version of the project's FreeBSD-based desktop operating system, is now ready for testing. Unlike the previous development releases, GhostBSD 10.1-BETA2 is available in two separate flavours - with MATE or Xfce desktop environments. From the release announcement: "We are pleased to announce the availability GhostBSD 10.1 BETA2 MATE and Xfce for the amd64 and i386 architectures. Changes and fixes between 10.1-BETA1 and 10.1-BETA2 include: GhostBSD ISO image is hybrid and can be transferred on a DVD or USB stick; Xfce as been added back to the project; the installer partition editor has been improved at the UI and system level; the user can choose to install the BSD boot manager, GRUB boot manager or none; the installation problem that failed to copy has been fixed; software from pkg or ports can be now installed on a live DVD/USB session; software installed before the installation of GhostBSD will be available after hard disk installation; PCDM locales and keyboard layout are now functional...." Download (pkglist): GhostBSD10.1-BETA2-mate-amd64.iso (1,642MB, SHA256); GhostBSD10.1-BETA2-xfce-amd64.iso (1,532MB, SHA256).

Artyom Zorin has announced the availability of the release candidate for the upcoming Zorin OS 10, a beginner-friendly desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 15.04: "We are excited to present the next version of Zorin OS with the release of the Zorin OS 10 Core release candidate. This is a pre-release version which has been built to get your feedback on what we have created so far. Zorin OS 10 is our best, most beautiful release yet. We have made major strides with the visual styling in Zorin OS. In addition to the refined and perfected desktop theme and the new default FreeSans desktop font, we have introduced a stunning new icon theme, its first major overhaul since Zorin OS 2.0. Zorin Theme Changer has been expanded, with the inclusion of new theme colors: green, orange and red alongside the classic blue theme from the previous versions of Zorin OS. With Zorin OS 10, we have refreshed the selection of default applications with the addition of a streamlined new media player, the gorgeous Geary mail client, the Calendar app and the new Activity Journal." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details and screenshots. Download (MD5): zorin-os-10-core-64-rc.iso (1,471MB, pkglist).

The FreeBSD 10.2 development cycle begins with the initial beta release: "The first BETA build of the 10.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Installation images are available for: amd64 GENERIC, i386 GENERIC, ia64 GENERIC, powerpc GENERIC, powerpc64 GENERIC64, sparc64 GENERIC, BEAGLEBONE, CUBOX-HUMMINGBOARD, armv6 RPI-B, armv6 WANDBOARD. If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR system or on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the 'stable/10' branch. A list of changes since 10.1-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes. Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be updated on an ongoing basis as the 10.2-RELEASE cycle progresses. VM disk images are available for the amd64 and i386 architectures." Here is the complete release announcement, with much more details provided in the above mentioned release notes. Quick links to download the installation DVD images for the amd64 and i386 architectures: FreeBSD-10.2-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,565MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (1,951MB, SHA256).

Peter Ryzhenkov has announced the release of Point Linux 3.0, a Debian-based distribution for the desktop with a choice of MATE and Xfce desktop environments. GNOME 3, used during the development and beta testing period, has been dropped and replaced with Xfce. From the release notes: "The Point Linux team proudly announces the availability of Point Linux 3.0. This release replaces the GNOME 3 flavour with Xfce. Both flavours got the new Point Linux Update Notifier that will keep your system up-to-date. Point Linux Xfce also comes with the Compton window compositor installed by default, bringing some eye candy to your Xfce desktop. The full editions include the latest Firefox and Thunderbird releases. Changes: Point Linux Update Notifier; Xfce flavour replaces GNOME 3 Classic flavour; Xfce flavour comes with Compton installed by default; Firefox 39.0 and Thunderbird 38.0.1; multiple Point Linux infrastructural changes; up-to-date Debian packages." Download (pkglist) the live DVD images with your preferred desktop: pointlinux-mate-full-3.0-64.iso (1,122MB, MD5, torrent), pointlinux-xfce-full-3.0-64.iso (1,038MB, MD5, torrent).

The LXLE project, which creates a lightweight desktop distribution based on Ubuntu, has announced the availability of a beta release of new small office and business edition. "I recently setup a small local garage with Linux. Particularly LXLE which is now handling all their business needs. This led me to attempt an LXLE version specifically designed for small to micro businesses. Probably businesses with 10 or less employees and of course freelancers should be able to install and use the system to handle most business interactions. What does the LS stand for? The LS stands for LanShop, which basically indicates that the main business apps are available to anyone on the network or LAN." The new edition offers a point of sale system, employee time clock, a content management site, business account software and a built in web server using Lighttpd, among other features. A complete list of business oriented features is available in the development build can be found in the project's release announcement. Downloads: lxle-ls-14.04.2.iso (1,459MB, MD5, pkglist).

The developers of Parsix GNU/Linux, a desktop oriented Debian-based distribution, have announced the availability of a new development release. The new release offers users an updated kernel, experimental UEFI support and the GNOME 3.16 desktop. "Parsix GNU/Linux 8.0 (code name Mumble) brings stable GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, a brand new kernel and an updated installer. This version has been synchronized with Debian Jessie repositories as of July 1, 2015. Parsix Mumble ships with GNOME 3.16 and LibreOffice 4.3.3 productivity suit by default. Highlights: Updated installer system with better UEFI support, GNOME Shell 3.16.2, GRUB 2, GNU Iceweasel 38.0.1...." The project has offered some additional notes for people who use NVIDIA and ATI video cards: "You can download and install nVidia (340.76) and ATI/AMD (14.12) precompiled drivers and kernel modules from the APT repository. If you are using an ATI/AMD graphic chip and have stability issues with GNOME Shell, use the non-free drivers. nVidia-legacy 173xx and 96xx series cards are not supported anymore and, users of those cards should switch to Nouveau open source driver." Further information can be found in the project's release notes. Download: parsix_8.0-TEST-1-amd64.iso (1,237MB, MD5, pkglist).

The 4MLinux project has announced a new release of the independent Linux distribution. The latest release, 4MLinux 13.0, ships with the GNU Compiler Collection 5 and offers miscellaneous desktop improvements. "The status of the 4MLinux 13.0 series has been changed to S. Major changes in the core of the system, which now uses GNU Compiler Collection 5.1.0 to compile programs designed for the i686 architecture. Additionally, I am very happy to announce that my long work on improving the 4MLinux Desktop has been finished. 4MLinux users can now enjoy the result of this work: a unique, highly customized mixture of JWM (Joe's Window Manager), Window Maker and PCManFM." The release announcement and this blog post offer details and a screen shot tour. Downloads (MD5): 4MLinux-13.0.iso (335MB, pkglist).

David Purse has announced the availability of the beta release of Simplicity Linux 15.7, a lightweight Puppy-based distribution for netbooks and desktops. Due to unresolved issues, the "Desktop" edition is only available in a 32-bit build for now. From the release announcement: "Simplicity Linux 15.7 beta is now available to download. It is based on the fantastic LXPup and it uses LXDE as its desktop. All versions come with the 4.0.2 kernel and as usual Simplicity is split into two editions - Netbook and Desktop. There is no 64-bit edition of Desktop, because we had some issues, but this will be resolved before the release. It should also be noted that these are beta releases, so some things may change, be removed, while other things may be added. It's a stable, working version, but still unfinished and rough around the edges." Interested beta testers can download (MD5) the live CD images from SourceForge: Desktop157Beta-32.iso (569MB), Netbook157Beta-64.iso (389MB), Netbook157Beta-32.iso (334MB).

Arjen Balfoort has announced the release of SolydXK 201407, an updated build of the project's Linux distributions with a choice of Xfce (SolydX) or KDE (SolydK) desktops, based on Debian's "Testing" branch: "The Home editions were upgraded to the latest upgrade pack and the Business editions were upgraded with the latest security updates. This time I will not list the version changes of the major applications, but limit myself to the most important changes. Debian has started to move 'Testing' to systemd. The Home editions use systemd while the Business editions continue to use sysvinit. For the Home editions, you will notice the difference during boot, but especially during shutdown which now takes a lot less time. We may still need your help to improve boot time, though. As from the last update, 'kdenext' was removed from SolydK. We are now tracking Debian KDE." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download (pkglist): solydx64_201407.iso (1,343MB, MD5, torrent), solydk64_201407.iso (1,708MB, MD5, torrent).

David Purse has announced the release of Simplicity Linux 14.7, a set of lightweight, Puppy-based Linux distributions in four editions: "Simplicity Linux 14.7 is now available for everyone to download for free. Obsidian is our cut-down edition, pretty much just Firefox 30, a network manager and not a lot else. Netbook is our lightweight edition of Simplicity Linux; it has a few local applications, but most of the hard work is done by Cloud-based applications. Desktop is our heavyweight release; it features LibreOffice, Skype, Dropbox and a lot of other software. If you're used to using Windows but it annoys you, Subdivision is designed for you; it comes with LibreOffice, Firefox, Java, Flash, and a Minecraft installer, so you can begin playing familiar games on Linux straight out the box." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (MD5) links: Obsidian147Release.iso (179MB), Netbook147Final.iso (385MB), Desktop147Release-2.iso (656MB, pkglist), Subdivision147-2.iso (688MB).

Artyom Zorin has announced the release of Zorin OS 9 "Educational" edition, an Ubuntu-based distribution packed with specialist software suitable for use in educational environments: "We are pleased to release Zorin OS 9 Educational. Zorin OS 9 Educational brings the latest and greatest software into the hands of students and teachers. Updated software and bug fixes ensure that your computer runs better than ever while improved hardware support and entirely new software ensures that you're getting the best experience you can, no matter which computer you use it on. All Zorin OS 9 editions are long-term support (LTS) releases which means that you'll continue to get software updates and security fixes until 2019, making it the ideal choice for large-scale deployments." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (MD5) the live DVD image from SourceForge: zorin-os-9-educational-64.iso (2,106MB). Also available from OSDisc.

Tim Booth has announced the release of Bio-Linux 8.0.2, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with a collection of specialist software designed for use in bioinformatics: "Bio-Linux 8 is a powerful, free bioinformatics workstation platform that can be installed on anything from a laptop to a large server, or run as a virtual machine. Bio-Linux 8 adds more than 250 bioinformatics packages to an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS base, providing around 50 graphical applications and several hundred command-line tools. The Galaxy environment for browser-based data analysis and workflow construction is also incorporated in Bio-Linux 8. Bio-Linux 8 represents the continued commitment of NERC to maintain the platform, and comes with many updated and additional tools and libraries. With this release we support pre-prepared VM images for use with VirtualBox, VMWare or Parallels." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement. Download: bio-linux-8.0.2.iso (3,346MB, MD5, pkglist).

George Vlahavas has announced the release of Salix 14.1 "Openbox" edition, a lightweight Slackware-based distribution featuring Openbox as the default window manager: "Salix Openbox 14.1 brings the Openbox window manager, teamed with fbpanel and SpaceFM to create a fast and flexible desktop environment. This is the most lightweight edition we have so far among our 14.1 releases and everything has been tweaked to provide a desktop experience comparable to other Salix editions. The development of this edition involved a long and rigorous period of testing and the final release has evolved a lot since the first beta. This release comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours, with both fitting comfortably within the size of a single CD. The 32-bit flavour is also our first 14.1 release that supports i486, non-PAE capable systems by using the respective kernel, although the default is still the i686 PAE SMP kernel." Here is the full release announcement. Download (MD5): salix64-openbox-14.1.iso (625MB, torrent). Also available from OSDisc.

Pat Riehecky has announced the availability of the first beta build of Scientific Linux 7.0, a distribution compiled from the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and enhanced with extra applications for scientific computing: "Today we are announcing a beta release of Scientific Linux 7. Changes since our last update: updated sl-release now correctly requires Coreutils for the post script; yum-cron, installed by default, now behaves in the same manner as yum-autoupdate; yum-conf-extras provides the SL Extras repository tracking TUV's Extras; yum-conf-hc provides the de-branded upstream hardware test toolkit; a standard DVD image is now provided, it should fit on a normal-sized DVD." Read the rest of the release announcement for a list of things not yet included in the release. More detailed information is available in the release notes. Download: SL-7-x86_64-DVD.iso (4,015MB, SHA256, pkglist).

Alex Polvi has announced the release of CoreOS 367.1.0, the first stable release of the specialist Linux distribution for servers and clusters: "First off, happy sysadmin day. We think we have a pretty good sysadmin surprise in store for you today as we are announcing the CoreOS stable release channel. Starting today, you can begin running CoreOS in production. This version is the most tested, secure and reliable version available for users wanting to run CoreOS. This is a huge milestone for us. Since our first alpha release in August 2013: 191 releases have been tagged; tested on hundreds of thousands of servers on the alpha and beta channels; supported on 10+ platforms, ranging from bare metal to being primary images on Rackspace and Google. CoreOS 367.1.0 includes the following: Linux kernel 3.15.2; Docker 1.0.1; support on all major cloud providers, including Rackspace Cloud...." Read the release announcement and the quick start guide to learn more. Download: coreos_production_iso_image.iso (133MB, SHA512).

Adam Conrad has announced the release of Ubuntu 14.04.1, the first maintenance update of the popular distribution's current stable release: "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (long-term support) for its Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support. As usual, this point release includes many updates, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Kubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, Edubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, Xubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, Mythbuntu 14.04.1 LTS, Ubuntu GNOME 14.04.1 LTS, Lubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, Ubuntu Kylin 14.04.1 LTS, and Ubuntu Studio 14.04.1 LTS are also now available." Read the release announcement for more details. Download (SHA256): ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso (981MB, torrent), ubuntu-14.04.1-server-amd64.iso (572MB, torrent). Also available from OSDisc.

Samuel Baggen has announced the release of Elive 2.3.4, the latest beta version from the project that builds a Debian-based distribution with a customised Enlightenment desktop: "The Elive team is proud to announce the release of the beta version 2.3.4. This new version includes: a send-to-Dropbox option has been added to the file manager; right-clicking on a movie in the file manager will now give you the option to get the subtitle; applications menu has been redesigned to be more intuitive; laptop WiFi switch now works properly on re-activation; keyboard hotkeys for volume and mute control are now configured automatically. We appreciate your feedbacks and reports, you can found us on the live chat most of the times! Note that this development release doesn't include yet the proprietary drivers for now (NVIDIA/ATI) but the open-source drivers should detect your hardware and configure your system without problems." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: elive_2.3.4_beta_hybrid.iso (2,074MB, MD5, pkglist).

Oracle has announced the release of Oracle Linux 7.0, a distribution rebuilt from source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, but featuring a custom "unbreakable" kernel: "Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 7. Oracle Linux 7 offers the latest innovations and improvements to support customers and partners in developing and deploying business critical applications across the data center and into the cloud. Features include: Btrfs Oracle Linux 7; XFS; Linux Containers (LXC); DTrace; Ksplice for zero-downtime kernel security updates and bug fixes; Xen enhancements; Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) 3; systemd, a new service and system manager; GRUB 2 as the default bootloader with support for additional firmware types, such as UEFI; support for in-place upgrades from Oracle Linux 6.5 to Oracle Linux 7." Read the release announcement, the official press release and the detailed release notes for further information. Download the installation DVD image from here: OracleLinux-R7-U0-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso (3,979MB, SHA256).

An updated version of Tails, a Debian-based distribution known for its strong privacy features and pre-configured for anonymous web browsing, has been released: "Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.1, is out. All users must upgrade as soon as possible - this release fixes numerous security issues. Notable user-visible changes include: re-base on Debian 7.0 'Wheezy'; upgrade thousands of packages; migrate to GNOME 3 'fallback' mode; install LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice.org; UEFI boot support, which should make it possible to boot Tails on modern hardware and Apple computers; replace the Windows XP camouflage with a Windows 8 camouflage; bring back VirtualBox guest modules, installed from Wheezy backports, full functionality is only available when using the 32-bit kernel. Fix write access to boot medium via udisks; upgrade the web browser to 24.7.0esr...." Here is the full release announcement with a list of known issues. Download: tails-i386-1.1.iso (1,048MB, torrent, pkglist).

Mati Aharoni has announced the release of Kali Linux 1.0.8, a minor update of the project's Debian-based distribution with specialist tools for penetration testing and forensic analysis: "The long awaited Kali Linux USB EFI boot support feature has been added to our binary ISO builds, which has prompted this early Kali Linux 1.0.8 release. This new feature simplifies getting Kali installed and running on more recent hardware which requires EFI as well as various Apple MacBook Air and Retina models. Besides the addition of EFI support, there is a whole array of tool updates and fixes that have accumulated over the past couple of months. As this new release focuses almost entirely on the EFI capable ISO image, Offensive Security won't be releasing additional ARM or VMWare images with 1.0.8. As usual, you don't need to re-download Kali if you've got it installed, and apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade should do the job." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download (SHA1): kali-linux-1.0.8-amd64.iso (3,037MB, pkglist).

Stephen Ewen has announced the release of UberStudent 4.0, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that includes specialist software for learning and teaching: "I'm pleased to announce the release of UberStudent 4.0 (LTS) 'Socrates' Xfce edition. UberStudent is a Linux distribution for learning, doing and teaching academic success at the higher education and advanced secondary levels. Much more than just an operating system, UberStudent aims to be a complete, ready-to-go out-of-the-box learning platform for education that facilitates not only immediate user-friendly productivity but cross-platform computer fluency among its users. System: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS base; Linux 3.13 kernel; Xfce 4.10; 32-bit and 64-bit ISO images for trying and installing; 32-bit and 64-bit OVA images for trying and running in VirtualBox." Read the release announcement and the more detailed release notes for further information. Download: uberstudent-4.0-xfce-amd64.iso (2,668MB, MD5, pkglist).

Curtis Gedak has announced the release of GParted Live 0.19.1-1, the latest stable release of the Debian-based live CD with specialist utilities designed for disk management and data rescue tasks: "The GParted team is proud to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. This live image contains GParted 0.19.1 which includes a critical bug fix to prevent GParted from crashing and potentially losing data. Items of note include: based on the Debian's 'sid' repository as of 2014-07-16; updated Linux kernel to 3.14.12; updated syslinux to 6.03-pre18; includes GParted 0.19.1 which includes a bug fix to prevent a crash caused by a cross thread race condition. This release of GParted Live has been successfully tested on VirtualBox, VMware, BIOS, UEFI, and physical computers with AMD/ATI, NVIDIA and Intel graphics." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (SHA256) from SourceForge: gparted-live-0.19.1-1-amd64.iso (194MB), gparted-live-0.19.1-1-i686-pae.iso (191MB), gparted-live-0.19.1-1-i486.iso (191MB, pkglist).

John Martinson has announced the release of Robolinux 7.5.5, the latest update of the Debian-based distribution that comes with a pre-configured VirtualBox for running Windows as a "guest" operating system: "Robolinux version 7.5.5 adds more privacy and safety for its users on the web. A large number of Robolinux users are extremely concerned about privacy so Robolinux has partnered exclusively with Spider Oak Cloud which is the only fully encrypted cloud service available with 'zero knowledge' privacy. Not even governments can access your uploaded data. Even with physical access to the storage servers, the SpiderOak staff cannot see even the names of your files and folders. Since they never store your password on their servers that means your data is always private. So please do not lose your password." Visit the project's SourceForge page to read the full release announcement and to learn about all the new features. Download (MD5): robolinux64v7.5.5.iso (1,951MB, pkglist).

UHU-Linux 3, an independently developed Hungarian Linux distribution designed for the domestic market and featuring the GNOME 3.12 desktop with GNOME Shell, has been released. It comes nearly four years after the project's last stable release, version 2.2. The distribution's home page (in Hungarian) announced the new release yesterday, providing some basic information about UHU-Linux 3. What's new? The SysVInit init system has been replaced by systemd; includes the latest NetworkManager 0.9.10 for network management; includes the latest versions of Firefox (with Flash and Java plugins) and Thunderbird (Chromium is available in repositories); the release comes as a live DVD image with an option to transfer it to a USB storage device. The main components: Linux kernel 3.15.5, GCC 4.8.3, glibc 2.19, GNOME 3.12 (KDE 4.13 and Xfce 4.10 are available in repositories), LibreOffice 4.3, GStreamer 1.2.4. Download the live DVD image from here: uhu-linux-3.iso (1,732MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

Fredrik Rinnestam has announced the release of CRUX 3.1, a lightweight, x86-64 optimised Linux distribution designed for experienced Linux users: "The CRUX team is happy to announce the release of CRUX 3.1 for the x86_64 architecture. CRUX 3.1 comes with a multilib toolchain which includes glibc 2.19.0, GCC 4.8.3 and Binutils 2.24, Linux kernel 3.12.24. CRUX 3.1 ships with X.Org 7.7 and X.Org Server 1.15.1. Important libraries have been updated to new major versions which are not ABI compatible with the old versions: libpng has been updated to version 1.6; libjpeg has been replaced by libjepeg-turbo; libmng has been updated to version 2.0. We strongly advise against manually updating to CRUX 3.1 via ports, since these changes will temporarily break the system. Important notes: udev has been replaced by eudev; the upgraded eudev will rename your Ethernet devices like udev...." See the full release notes for more information. Download: crux-3.1.iso (333MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

Eric Turgeon has announced the availability of the third beta build of GhostBSD 4.0, a desktop-oriented operating system (with MATE), based on FreeBSD: "The GhostBSD team is pleased to announce the availability the third beta build of the 4.0-RELEASE release cycle is available on SourceForge for the amd64 and i386 architectures. This is expected to be the final beta build of the 4.0-RELEASE cycle. This release includes some bug fixes as well as new and updated packages. This release also includes the changes of direction GhostBSD is taking, three workstations built on top of MATE desktop - Classic, Purity and Element. New feature added: first boot selector to choose the workstation to use with GhostBSD; X.Org boot configuration; CLI driver configuration; Plank has been added. Changes and fixes between 4.0-BETA2 and 4.0-BETA3 include: fix GBI entire installation option; GBI slide has been updated; FreeBSD base system updated to 10.0-RELEASE-p6." See the release announcement for more information and screenshots of the three desktop layout options. Download (MD5): GhostBSD4.0-BETA3-amd64.iso (1,253MB, pkglist).

FreeBSD 9.3, the latest update to the project's legacy branch, has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release of the stable/9 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: the zfs(8) filesystem has been updated to support the bookmarks feature; the uname(1) utility has been updated to include the -U and -K flags, which print the FreeBSD_version for the running userland and kernel, respectively; the fetch(3) library has been updated to support SNI, allowing to use virtual hosts on HTTPS; several updates to gcc(1) have been imported from Google." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download: FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,718MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (1,581MB, SHA256).

Artyom Zorin has announced the release of Zorin OS 9, a new version of the Ubuntu-based user-friendly distribution designed for newcomers to Linux: "We are excited to announce the release of Zorin OS 9 Core and Ultimate. The main focus for Zorin OS 9 has been on stability and the refinement of Zorin OS' wide array of incredible features. Firstly, Zorin OS 9 includes a myriad of updated software and bug fixes to ensure that your computer runs better than ever. New applications such as the Firefox web browser and Rhythmbox music player have also been included in this release. EFI boot support has been added, making it easier to get Zorin OS on newer computers (64-bit only). In addition, we have introduced a new Blue desktop theme to the Zorin Theme Changer in complement to the Light and Dark themes. As Zorin OS 9 is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS you can expect to receive continuous software updates until 2019." Read the full release announcement which includes a screenshot of the Zorin desktop. Download (MD5): zorin-os-9-core-64.iso (1,426MB). Also available from OSDisc.

HandyLinux is a Debian-based distribution that features a novice-friendly start menu with application launchers and Internet bookmarks. The just-announced version 1.6 is the project's first release that merges the French and English flavours into one download, available for the i486 and i686 (PAE) architectures. There is a long list of other changes and new features, including: improvements in the accessibility menu; addition of keyboard shortcuts that make use of the Windows key; addition of BigBuckBunny to video samples; addition of safe mode start-up to the live menu; addition of keyboard selection for the live session; integration of HandyLinux meta-packages; addition of apt/preferences file for installing LibreOffice and backports; switch to the IcedTea 7 Java plugin.... Read the full release announcement (in French) for a full changelog and upgrade instructions. Download (MD5) from SourceForge: handylinux-1.6-686.iso (1,244MB), handylinux-1.6-486.iso (1,244MB).

Chitwanix OS is a Linux distribution developed by a community of Linux developers in Nepal. Based on Ubuntu and featuring a desktop environment called Sagarmatha (a fork of Cinnamon), the distribution's second stable release, version 1.5, was announced today: "The team is proud to announce the release of our second version, Chitwanix OS 1.5 'Khukuri'. Some remarkable improvements of this release are: Sagarmatha 1.0.2; HTML5 login screen with a user list and on-screen keyboard; updated software packages; improvements in drivers and supports like WiFi drivers, Ethernet drivers, graphics, HDMI; improvements in Nemo and its extensions; artworks improvements. Sagarmatha 1.0.2 is a desktop environment for Chitwanix OS which is forked from Cinnamon 2.0, featuring a lot of additional bug fixes, features and tweaks. Version 1.0 is the initial version of Sagarmatha which is installed as default in Khukuri." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details and screenshots. Download: chitwanix-os-1.5-khukuri.iso (2,618MB, SHA256, torrent).

Red Hat has announced the availability of the beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.11. This is expected to be the last release of the 5.x series of RHEL whose 10-year support cycle will terminate in 2017. From the release announcement: "When Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 was first introduced in 2007, it was done so with an expected seven year life cycle. Five years later, in 2012, we saw the continued strong adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and decided to extend its seven year life cycle to 10 years. Now, in 2014, the original retirement year for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, we still see an active, dedicated customer base that has come to value this long, predictable life cycle in addition to the platform’s inherent security, stability, and reliability. Today, we are pleased to announce beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11." As always, all existing RHEL customers who would like to test this release can obtain it from Red Hat Customer Portal.

David Cortarello has announced the release of Kwort Linux 4.1, a lightweight CRUX-based distribution with Openbox and a custom package manager called kpkg: "Kwort Linux 4.1 is out. This new version is fast, stable, and simple as always. Everything has been built from scratch in a clean way. Most significant technical aspects are: Linux kernel 3.13.7; Chromium 34.0.1847.132 and Firefox 30.0 are both installed by default; LibreOffice 4.2.2 is also available in more/xapps. As usual our system remains light and clean as Kwort users like it. People and projects I would like to thank: our infrastructure providers, the people from PGHosting and Ricardo Brisighelli for the package mirror and development environment in the UNR. As usual, a big thanks to the CRUX people for developing it, as it is the system Kwort is based on; CRUX 3.1 made this version of Kwort really easy to build." Visit the distribution's home page to read the brief release announcement. Download the installation CD image from here: kwort-4.1.iso (591MB, MD5).

Anne Nicolas has announced the availability of the initial alpha release of Mageia 5, the project's upcoming version due for a final release in the second half of December: "Here is the first step towards Mageia 5. Most of your favorite software has been updated to their latest versions. There is still a long road ahead, but all in all, this first alpha is in rather good shape. Base system: Linux kernel 3.15.2, systemd 208, Perl 5.20.0. Graphical environments: KDE 4.13.2, Qt 4.8.6, GNOME 3.13.3. Office applications: LibreOffice 4.2.4.2. Artwork and design: New artwork is not yet integrated in this early stage of Mageia 5." Read the release announcement and the very incomplete release notes for further information. Download the live or installation DVD images from Mageia's mirrors: Mageia-5-alpha1-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,557MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-alpha1-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,462MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-alpha1-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,695MB, MD5, torrent).

Michael Tremer has announced the release of IPFire 2.15 Core 79, the latest stable release of the project's specialist Linux distribution for firewalls: "IPFire 2.15 Core Update 79 is finally arriving with many bug fixes and enhancements. Among the big changes with this update are lots feature enhancements that massively increase the security level of OpenVPN connections, some enhancements of the web user interface and a lot more awesome stuff under the hood. The OpenVPN capabilities have been massively extended by Erik Kapfer. The certificate authority that can be created on the OpenVPN page now uses much better hashes to protect the integrity of itself. The CA root certificate uses a SHA512 hash and a RSA key with length of 4096 bit. All new created host certificates use a RSA key with 2048 bit length and a SHA256 hash. Additionally, a set of Diffie-Hellman parameters can be generated for better protection of the session keys." Read the detailed release announcement for further information. Download: ipfire-2.15.i586-full-core79.iso (126MB, SHA1).

Paweł Pijanowski has announced the release of SparkyLinux 3.4 "GameOver" edition, a Debian-based distribution designed for gaming enthusiasts: "SparkyLinux 3.4 'GameOver' is out. It has been built on the top of SparkyLinux 3.4 'Annagerman' and it's fully compatible with Debian's 'testing' repository. 'GameOver' is a special edition of Sparky targeted to game players. 'GameOver' 3.4 features: access to games compiled for Linux platform; access to 'popular' and 'modern' games via Steam and Desura platforms; access to many games created for MS Windows platform via Wine and PlayOnLinux; access to 'old' games created for discontinued machines and systems via emulators. What's under the hood of GameOver 3.4: Linux kernel 3.14.7; all packages upgraded from Debian's testing repositories as of 2014-07-03; LXDE 0.5.5, Openbox 3.5.2, PCManFM 1.2.0, Iceweasel 30.0 and a few important applications; support for installation on machines with EFI; systemd is the default init system now...." Here is the full release announcement with a screenshot. Download: sparkylinux-3.4-x86_64-gameover.iso (3,818MB, MD5).

The much-awaited initial release of CentOS 7, a distribution built by compiling the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, is out: "We would like to announce the general availability of CentOS 7 for 64-bit x86 compatible machines. This is the first release for CentOS 7 and is version marked as 7.0-1406. Since the upstream EL7 release, there have been some updates released - these have been built and are being pushed to the CentOS mirror network at the moment. They will be available within the next 24 hrs. From this point on we will aim to deliver all updates within 24 to 48 hours of upstream releases. For the first time, this release was built from sources hosted at git.centos.org." See the release announcement and release notes for detailed information about the product. Download (mirror list, SHA256): CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,956MB, torrent), CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-GnomeLive.iso (1,057MB, torrent), CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-KdeLive.iso (1,238MB, torrent).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third (and likely last) release candidate for FreeBSD 9.3: "The third RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. This is expected to be the final RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE cycle. Changes between 9.3-RC2 and 9.3-RC3 include: bug fix for axge(4) range checks and receive loop header parsing; bug fix to exclude loopback addresses rather than loopback interfaces has been fixed; bug fix in uhso(4) to prevent memory use after free() and mtx_destroy(); bug fix in bsdinstall(8) where certain conditions could prevent directory creation before use; bug fix for DNS-based load balancing; vendor update to oce(4)." Read the complete release announcement for more information. Download: FreeBSD-9.3-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,716MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.3-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso (1,581MB, SHA256).

Zbigniew Konojacki has announced the release of 4MLinux 9.0, a minimalist and lightweight desktop Linux distribution with JWM as the preferred window manager: "The status of the 4MLinux 9.0 series has been changed to stable. The final release has all the features included in 4MLinux 9.0 Rescue edition, 4MLinux 9.0 Media edition, 4MLinux 9.0 Server edition, and 4MLinux 9.0 Game edition. I do not use code names in 4MLinux, but if I did this would be 'nerdy' for the 9.0 series. You can install development packages just in one click. Some of the packages (e.g. full versions of Python and Perl) can be used by both programmers and webmasters. An option to download and install the vanilla version of Clang with LLVM has also been added." Visit the project's news page on Blogspot to read the brief release announcement and to see a screenshot of the desktop. Download (MD5) the live CD image from SourceForge: 4MLinux-9.0-allinone-edition.iso (214MB).

Chen Xiang Bang has announced the release of Deepin 2014, a new stable version of the Ubuntu-based community distribution with a custom desktop environment that bears the same name: "Deepin 2014 release - hold your dream and move forward. Deepin is a Linux distribution that aims to provide an elegant, user-friendly, safe and stable operating system for global users. Based on HTML5 technologies, Deepin team has developed a series of new special software applications, such as Deepin Desktop Environment, Deepin Music Player, DPlayer and Deepin Software Center. Deepin 2014 brings a brand-new Deepin Desktop Environment 2.0, with a specially designed Deepin theme, which makes the overall style and appearance of Deepin 2014 unified, neat and tidy. It also adds convenient features, such as user guide, starter Chinese phonetic search and intuitive hot zone settings." See the release announcement for a full list of improvements and plenty of screenshots. Download: deepin_2014_final_amd64.iso (1,244MB, MD5).

TheeMahn has announced the release of Ultimate Edition 4.2, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the MATE 1.8 desktop environment: "Ultimate Edition 4.2 was built from the ground up debootstrapped from the Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty Thar' tree using Tmosb (TheeMahn's Operating System Builder) which is also included in this release. This release is a long-term support (LTS) release, supported until the year 2019. This release is most certainly worthy of the Ultimate Edition title. What makes this operating system different then any other operating system on the entire planet? The entire Mate 1.8 repository was first repo-stormed by a world-changing application I am developing. I have told the world it was coming. I have included many, many tools I am constructing that reside under the hood of virtually all Ultimate Edition releases." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download (MD5): ultimate-edition-4.2-x64-lite.iso (3,017MB).

Pat Riehecky has announced the availability of an early alpha release of Scientific Linux 7, a distribution compiled from the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7: "Fermilab's intention is to continue the development and support of Scientific Linux and refine its focus as an operating system for scientific computing. Today we are announcing an alpha release of Scientific Linux 7. We continue to develop a stable process for generating and distributing Scientific Linux, with the intent that Scientific Linux remains the same high quality operating system the community has come to expect. This alpha does not include many historic SL addons. We would like to open discussion on which specific packages and utilities should be added to SL 7." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information. Interested alpha testers can download either the full 6.2 GB ISO image (which can be transferred to a USB storage device) or the small "netinst" image (SHA256): SL-7-x86_64-DVD.iso (6,377MB), SL-7-x86_64-netinst.iso (392MB).

Alexander Tratsevskiy has announced the release of Calculate Linux 13.19, an updated version of the Gentoo-based distribution with separate flavours for desktops (with KDE or Xfce), servers and media centres: "We are happy to announce that Calculate Linux 13.19, the last of the 13th, has been released. CL 14 is coming soon after, with many new features, such as totally rewritten assemble & compilation utilities, GUI and command-line updater, automatic update check, new approach to profiles. Major changes: software update: Linux kernel 3.14.9, KDE 4.13.2, LibreOffice 4.2.5, Chromium 35; a configuration tool for Shorewall has been added to CLD, CLDX, CDS and CMC; exFAT is now supported in CLD, CLDX and CMC; CLD and CLDX have PulseAudio support...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a full list of changes. Download: cld-13.19-x86_64.iso (KDE, 2,258MB, MD5, torrent), cldx-13.19-x86_64.iso (Xfce, 1,705MB, MD5, torrent), cmc-13.19-x86_64.iso (XBMC, 1,068MB, MD5, torrent).

Steven Shiau has released a new stable version of Clonezilla Live, a Debian-based specialist live CD for disk imaging and cloning tasks: "This release of Clonezilla live (2.2.3-25) includes major enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements and changes: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has been upgraded, this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2014-07-01; Linux kernel has been updated to 3.14.7; the drbl package has been updated to 2.9.9 and Clonezilla has been updated to 3.10.26; syslinux has been updated to 6.03-pre17; the makeboot.sh script has been patched to support XFS, UFS and FFS; the ca_ES, de_DE, es_ES, fr_FR, it_IT, ja_JP.UTF-8 and sk_SK language files have been updated; a testing program 'ocs-img-2-vdk' has been added, it can be used to convert Clonezilla image as virtual disk file (qcow2 and vmdk) via KVM...." Read the release announcement for a full list of changes and enhancements. Download (SHA256) links: clonezilla-live-2.2.3-25-amd64.iso (143MB), clonezilla-live-2.2.3-25-i686-pae.iso (139MB), clonezilla-live-2.2.3-25-i486.iso (138MB).

José Antonio Calvo has announced the release of Zentyal 3.5, a major new version of the project's server distribution - now based on Ubuntu 14.04: "The Zentyal development team is proud to announce the release of Zentyal 3.5, a new Zentyal Server Community edition. Zentyal Server is the open-source alternative to Windows Small Business Server, including native replacements to Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange Server. Among all the changes Zentyal 3.5 introduces, we would like to put the focus on: new base distribution: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 'Trusty'; removal of synchronization with OpenLDAP; support for Microsoft Outlook 2010 and inbox refresh improved; removal of some modules (L7 Filter, FTP, Zarafa, User Corner, Captive Portal and Bandwidth Monitor) to focus on the rest." Read the release announcement for upgrade instructions and see the detailed changelog for a long list of improvements. Download: zentyal-3.5-amd64.iso (637MB, MD5).

A bug-fix release of MX Linux 14, a variant of antiX developed in collaboration with the MEPIS Community and featuring the Xfce desktop, has been released: "MX-14.2 'Symbiosis' bug-fix upgrade release available. Upgraded bug-fix versions (PAE and non-PAE) of MX-14 are now available. This version has fixed some bugs found in MX-14.1.1 and Debian upstream. LibreOffice updated to the 4.2.5 version; Google search engine bug fixed; toned down faulty hard drive error when installing; image files open with mirage; wl modules for Broadcom wireless now on the CD image; updated documentation." Visit the project's home page to read the brief release announcement. Download: MX-14.2-pae.iso (699MB, MD5), MX-14.2-non-pae.iso (698MB, MD5). Besides the "MX" edition, the antiX project also announced the availability of the second alpha release of antiX 14; here is the quick download link: antiX-14R-alpha2_386-full.iso (697MB, MD5).

Superb Mini Server (SMS) 2.0.5 has been released. SMS is a Slackware-based distribution designed for servers and featuring Webmin, a web-based system administration utility. From the release announcement: "Superb Mini Server version 2.0.5 released (Linux kernel 3.4.55). SMS-2.0.5 features the latest LTS Linux kernel 3.4.55 and brings several server packages updates such as CUPS 1.6.3, Dovecot 2.2.4, httpd 2.2.25, PHP 5.3.27, Postfix 2.10.1, Samba 4.0.7 and many more. Two bugs fixed in this release since version 2.0.4 are HAL and phpMyAdmin - HAL detection has been restored in KDE fixing empty system:/media issue, and fixed wrong configuration in phpMyAdmin. New packages in this release are Fluxbox window manager - you need to choose it upon installation. MySQL is still our main database server in SMS 2.0.5, the latest MariaDB package is available. Again httpd 2.4.6 and PHP 5.4.17 are available under testing for those who want to upgrade their web server." Download link: SMS64.Native.CD-2.0.5-Install.iso (699MB, MD5).

Wifislax 4.6, an updated build of the Slackware-based live CD with a collection of security and forensics tools, has been released. This is mostly a maintenance release to fix a serious bug in Reaver, a WiFi passphrase brute-force attack utility, the use of which resulted in segmentation fault in the previous release of Wifislax. The Linux kernel has been updated to version 3.6.11 with a number of new drivers to support tablets, touchscreen devices, multi-function printers, etc. The KDE desktop has been upgraded to version 4.10.5 and an option to boot into a lighter Xfce desktop remains available. Other package upgrades include Firefox 22.0, OpenJDK 7u25 and Wireshark 1.10.0, as well as the latest version of the Flash browser plugin. A number of new programs, such as nano and texinfo, have been added. The release announcement which contains a full changelog is in Spanish only, but the distribution itself can boot into either Spanish or English localisation of the KDE or Xfce desktops. Download the live CD image from here: wifislax-4-6-final.iso (630MB, MD5).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second beta build of FreeBSD 9.2: "The second beta build of the 9.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Changes between -BETA1 and -BETA2 include: fix an interoperability problem between FreeBSD NFS Server (version 4) and Linux NFS (version 4) clients; fix nvme(4) and nvd(4) to support non 512-byte sector sizes; Fix freebsd-update(8) for -BETA2 by removing a file with non-POSIX characters in its name, this file is not needed for FreeBSD builds, and caused freebsd-update(8) to error on -BETA1; fix an XHCI regression; fix a bug in ipv6_prefix_I; fix address range specification with various ifconfig(8) options.; fix denial of service vulnerability in named(8)." Read the full release announcement for more information and upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-9.2-BETA2-amd64-disc1.iso (699MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (579MB, SHA256).

Bary Kauler has announced the release of Puppy Linux 5.7 "Precise" edition, a minimalist and fast distribution featuring the JWM window manager and compatible with Ubuntu 12.04 packages: "This is going to take everyone by surprise. I decided that 5.7beta2 is pretty good, so haven't bothered with an RC. Here is a short announcement. Another pup in the Precise series! This pup comes in two flavours, one for older hardware and/or those on dial-up Internet, the other for those with relatively modern hardware. The 'retro' flavour is an upgrade path for those who have used our 'Wary' Puppy, that targeted older PCs and analog modem dial-up - unlike most other Linux distributions, it continues to support a wide range of analog winmodems. It also has two web browsers, SeaMonkey and Opera, the latter preferred for PCs with less than 256 MB RAM." Read the rest of the release announcement and check out the more technical release notes for further information. Download (MD5): precise-5.7.iso (170MB), precise-5.7-retro.iso (200MB).

Petter Reinholdtsen has announced the availability of the initial public beta of Skolelinux 7.1, a distribution also known as "Debian Edu": "The first "Wheezy"-based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up today. Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school network. Software updates: switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to NetworkManager for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more; changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser packages to make sure our locally-patched versions will be replaced by the official packages when they are released from Debian; added Bluetooth tools to the default desktop; added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE; added Valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of crash bugs...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a full changelog. Download: debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso (655MB, MD5).

Paweł Pijanowski has announced the final release of SparkyLinux 3.0, a Debian-based distribution with a choice of LXDE (default), Enlightenment, Openbox, JWM, MATE and Razor-qt desktop user interfaces: "SparkyLinux 3.0 'Annagerman' is out. SparkyLinux 3.x is built on the 'testing' branch of Debian GNU/Linux. The final release of Sparky 3.0 features: Linux kernel 3.9.8; all packages updated from Debian's testing repositories as of 2013-07-21; minor bug fixes; small improvements on all the desktops; new Sparky3 theme compatible with GNOME 3.8; added extra functionality to the CLI edition (former name 'Core')." Here is the full release announcement with a screenshot. Download: sparkylinux-3.0-x86_64.iso (LXDE and Enlightenment, 1,531MB, MD5), sparkylinux-3.0-x86_64-ultra.iso (Openbox and JWM, 1,326MB, MD5), sparkylinux-3.0-x86_64-mate.iso (MATE, 1,555MB, MD5), sparkylinux-3.0-x86_64-razorqt.iso (Razor-Qt, 1,379MB, MD5).

George Vlahavas has announced the release of Salix OS 14.0.1 "KDE" edition, an updated build of the project's Slackware-based distribution featuring the KDE 4.8.5 desktop: "Salix KDE 14.0.1 has been released. It is built around KDE 4.8.5 and as always, it is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. One major change since our 13.37 KDE release, that is immediately evident to the user, is that the default browser is now QupZilla, in place of Mozilla Firefox. QupZilla is a Qt-based browser that uses the WebKit rendering engine that is fast, feature-complete and standards-compliant and it fits perfectly inside KDE. The Calligra office suite is also available and has replaced KOffice. Calligra is made up of several applications closely tied to KDE, including a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program, a chart and graph creator, a vector graphics tool...." Continue to the release announcement for further details. Download (MD5): salix64-kde-14.0.1.iso (933MB, torrent). Also available from OSDisc.

Devon Kearns has announced the release of Kali Linux 1.0.4, an updated version of the Debian-based distribution (formerly known as BackTrack Linux) that features an extensive collection of security and forensics tools: "In keeping with our tradition of publishing new releases during the annual Black Hat and DEF CON conferences, we are pleased to announce the availability of Kali Linux 1.0.4. The last few months since the initial release of Kali have seen a large number of changes, upgrades, and improvements in the distribution, all of which are included in version 1.0.4. Thanks to numerous requests from the Kali Linux community on the Kali Bug Tracker, we have added many new tools to Kali’s arsenal. Our quest to get Kali Linux running on popular ARM hardware is going strong and our trusted contributor, Offensive Security, has provided new ARM images for the BeagleBone Black, CuBox and Efika MX to our growing collection." Read the release announcement for further details. Download: kali-linux-1.0.4-amd64.iso (2,345MB, SHA1, torrent).

Jonathan Riddell has announced the availability of the second alpha release of Kubuntu 13.10, along with development builds of Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntuKylin and Xubuntu: "The second alpha of the 'Saucy Salamander' (to become 13.10) has now been released for testers and early adopters. This alpha features images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, UbuntuKylin and Xubuntu. Highlights: KDE Plasma and Applications 4.11 RC1 - this upgrade from KDE adds faster Nepomuk indexing, Kontact improvements such as a new theme editor for e-mails and prepares the ground for future developments using Wayland and Qt 5; Muon Discover - a friendly way to discover and install applications; includes the 3.9.0.7 Ubuntu Linux kernel which is based on the upstream version 3.9.7 Linux kernel." See the Kubuntu release notes for more details, screenshots and known issues. Download: saucy-desktop-amd64.iso (957MB, SHA256, torrent).

Neal Murphy has announced that the second release candidate for Smoothwall Express 3.1, a specialist firewall distribution featuring a security-hardened GNU/Linux operating system and an intuitive web administration interface, is ready for testing: "The Smoothwall community is pleased to announce the second release candidate for our long-awaited Smoothwall Express 3.1 Firewall. RC2 corrects a number of usability problems found in the first release candidate. The build system has been thoroughly worked over, and the user interface has been freshened with several presentation improvements. The vast majority of the work was done 'under the hood'. Here are just a few of the software upgrades: Linux kernel 3.4, glibc 2.14.1, GCC 4.7.2, Perl 5.14.4, Squid 3.3.5, httpd 2.2.24, iptables 1.4.14 and Openswan 2.6.38." Read the full release announcement for information about key new features and improvements in Smoothwall Express 3.1. Download (MD5): Express-3.1-rc2-x86_64.iso (216MB), Express-3.1-rc2-i686.iso (209MB).

David Purse has announced the release of Simplicity Linux 13.7, a new version of the project's Puppy Linux derivative with LXDE as the default desktop environment: "We are proud to announce that Simplicity Linux 13.7 is now available. There are many differences between Simplicity Linux 13.4 and Simplicity Linux 13.7. This is the first version of Simplicity Linux based on LXPup rather than Carolina or Saluki. We have a new, more back-to-basics UI. The Cairo Dock bar has gone and now we're using the standard dock from LXDE. Speaking of LXDE, we are moving from Xfce to LXDE because it is noticeably easier on laptop batteries, but we feel the differences between look and feel are minimal. As laptop users, we thought that anything which gives you a bit more battery life has to be a good thing! We have also put more focus on Gslapt as the package manager." Continue to the release announcement to learn more. Download: SimplicityDesktop137Release.iso (451MB).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the initial beta build of FreeBSD 9.2 which, according to the release schedule, should become the new stable release on 31 August 2013: "The first beta build of the 9.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, and ia64 architectures. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal GNATS PR system or here on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system use "stable/9". Please be aware that cvsup and CVS are both deprecated, and are not supported methods of updating the src/ tree. Important note to freebsd-update(8) users - due to a last-minute problem found in the 9.2-BETA1 freebsd-update(8) builds, freebsd-update(8) is NOT supported for 9.2-BETA1 upgrades. Please do not use freebsd-update(8) to upgrade to 9.2-BETA1." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-9.2-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (700MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-9.2-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (580MB, SHA256).

Alan Baghumian has announced the availability of the third test release of Parsix GNU/Linux 5.0, a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution with GNOME 3.8: "The third and final testing release of Parsix GNU/Linux 5.0, code name 'Lombardo', has been released. This is an RC-quality release and the goal is to make the final version ready by next week. This version ships with the GNOME 3.8.3 desktop environment and Linux kernel 3.8.13 built on top of the rock-solid Debian 7.0 platform. It also merges all security and bug fix updates from Debian repositories as of July 17, 2013. Other notable changes in 5.0: new artwork based on ​Metal X Shell Theme, ​Pull Me Under II HD wallpaper, ​Foresight GTK+ 2 theme engine and Faience icon; updated Adobe Flash player to 11.2.202.297. Note for NVIDIA and ATI users: it's now possible to install ATI, NVIDIA and legacy NVIDIA (173xx and 96xx series) drivers and kernel modules from the APT repository." Please see the release notes for further information. Download: parsix_5.0-TEST-3-amd64.iso (1,079MB, MD5).

Patrick d'Emmabuntüs has announced the availability of the updated build of Emmabuntüs, a Xubuntu-based distribution designed specifically for refurbished computers given to humanitarian organisations: "The Emmabuntüs team is pleased to announce the fourth maintenance release of Emmabuntüs 2 1.05 based on Xubuntu 12.04.2. This distribution was designed to facilitate the refurbishing of computers given to humanitarian organizations and to promote the discovery of Linux by beginners, but also to extend the life of the equipment and to reduce waste caused by over-consumption of raw materials. This update is delivered to improve the use of Emmabuntüs 2 and allow JerryClan Ivory Coast easily recondition machines and develop a Jerry/Emmabuntüs set of services. This service is based on a free mobile tracking application by SMS for tuberculosis patients, as well as M-Pregnancy for monitoring pregnancies and pregnant women." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: Emmabuntus2-desktop-12.04.2-1.05.iso (3,311MB, MD5).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of the "KDE" edition of Linux Mint 15: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' KDE. KDE is a vibrant, innovative, advanced, modern looking and full-featured desktop environment. This edition features all the improvements from the latest Linux Mint release on top of KDE 4.10. Here are a few examples of what is new in KDE 4.10: a new screen locker makes Workspaces more secure; KWin now detects some virtual machines and enables OpenGL compositing if possible; the proprietary AMD driver now has OpenGL 2 support; printer setup, maintenance and job control are improved with a new implementation of the Print Manager; Dolphin has seen many bug fixes, improvements and new features, e.g. transferring files to and from a phone or other mobile device has become easier with support for MTP devices, which show up in the Places panel." Continue reading the release announcement and the what's new page for more information. Download: linuxmint-15-kde-dvd-64bit.iso (1,324MB, SHA256, torrent).

Stefano Fratepietro has announced the release of DEFT Linux 8, a Lubuntu-based distribution and live DVD featuring a collection of open-source tools for digital forensics and penetration testing: "Dear guys, we did our best to turn the DEFT 8 beta version into stable -- also by listening to your precious suggestions and feedback -- and here we are. You can download the DEFT 8 final stable ISO image (which now includes DART 2). The stable version has been checked against common bugs but we are human and pretty busy with our jobs so if we missed something, just drop a line to bug at deftlinux.net and we'll collect suggestions and bug fixes for the next release. A big thank to the DEFT team and to all the supporters. Stay tuned, because much more is yet to come, such as the release of the DEFT 8 virtual appliance (a pre-configured virtual machine you will be able to launch on your workstation by means of VMware Workstation or VMPlayer or Virtualbox); the DEFT 8 user manual; the updated website." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: deft8.iso (2,764MB, MD5). Also available from OSDisc.

Daniel Drake has announced the release of OLPC OS 13.2.0, a Fedora-based Linux distribution developed under the initiative of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project to provide children in developing countries with low-cost laptops: "We're pleased to announce the release of OLPC OS 13.2.0 for XO-1, XO-1.5, XO-1.75 and XO-4. OLPC OS 13.2.0 is a new software release focusing on cleaning up a few edges from our previous release, and finishing off support for the new XO-4 laptop. Features: XO-4 power management is now stable and enabled by default; Bluetooth support as a purchase option; in the Clock activity, you can now use the touchscreen to drag the clock hands to another time, a useful exercise for learning about time; drop-down lists are sub-optimal for touch, they have been replaced by more intuitive and touch-friendly UI elements in Record; the pinch-to-zoom touch gestures in Image Viewer behave much better than before...." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download: 32013o0.img (721MB, MD5).

George Vlahavas has announced the release of Salix OS 14.0.1 "Xfce" edition, a Slackware-based distribution featuring the latest Xfce desktop environment: "Salix Xfce 14.0.1 is ready. There have been a lot of updates in the 14.0 branch, including several security updates that prompted this new release. Salix Xfce 14.0.1 is based on Xfce 4.10 and it comes with an updated 3.2.45 kernel that fixes several security issues, LibreOffice updated to version 4.x, Java security updates, an update to Midori, our main browser, to version 0.5.2 along with an updated Webkit engine that includes a lot of stability fixes, plus a lot more security updates to several packages like Flash plugin, Pidgin, Perl, X.Org etc. A couple of minor bugs that were also present after the original 14.0 release are fixed now. Also, the screensaver is disabled by default now, as it seems there were a few cases with some graphics cards acting up with certain 3D screensavers." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download (MD5): salix64-xfce-14.0.1.iso (673MB, torrent). Also available from OSDisc.

Available since last week, the third milestone release of openSUSE 13.1 has now been officially announced: "It is now time to get the newest milestone release of openSUSE. Please remember that there is only one more milestone before openSUSE starts beta testing. There is still time for you to submit your bugs and requests for the distribution to include. As it is generally with milestones the changes are not dramatic, but there are some highlights: GNOME 3.9.3 (3.10 beta), KDE 4.10.90 (4.11 beta), GCC 4.8, Linux kernel updated to the final stable version 3.10. Subversion also changed to the latest stable release. Also, Mozilla Firefox is now updated to the latest version 22, improvements include WebRTC which is now enabled by default." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (mirrors): openSUSE-Factory-KDE-Live-Build0574-x86_64.iso (925MB, MD5, torrent), openSUSE-Factory-GNOME-Live-Build0574-x86_64.iso (894MB, MD5, torrent).

Kai Hendry has announced the release of Webconverger 21.0, an updated version of the project's Debian-based distribution for Internet-only kiosks and similar deployments: "Webconverger 21 release. Firefox 22 and Flash security updates; fixed an issue whereby the installer would not show up on a small subset of machines; upgraded to syslinux 6 which should make the boot experience slightly smoother; re-introduced support for allowing pop-ups via the prefs= API; prefs= API has been beefed up so you can practically script Firefox to do whatever you want using autoconfig files; removed the proprietary Google Talk plugin in favour of WebRTC; TTF Liberation fonts are back to improve compatibility with Windows renderings. In other news we are working on a Webconverger Raspberry PI port, finally. With the caveat that it will only be used in web signage use cases (Neon) and not as a kiosk browsing machine. We were recently interviewed about Neon if you want to learn more." Here is the brief release announcement with a screenshots. Download: webc-21.0.iso (346MB).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 15 "Xfce" edition: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' Xfce. The highlight of this edition is the lightweight Xfce 4.10 desktop. Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment which aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. It embodies the traditional UNIX philosophy of modularity and re-usability. It consists of a number of components that provide the full functionality one can expect of a modern desktop environment. They are packaged separately and you can pick among the available packages to create the optimal personal working environment. The default menu used in this edition is Whisker which features quick access to your favorite applications, categories, system shortcuts, recent documents and recently used applications." Read the release announcement and visit the what's new page for further information, screenshots and system requirements. Download: linuxmint-15-xfce-dvd-64bit.iso (925MB, SHA256, torrent).

Paweł Pijanowski has announced the availability of the release candidate for SparkyLinux 3.0, a Debian-based distribution with a choice of LXDE (default), Enlightenment, Openbox, JWM, MATE and now also Razor-qt desktop user interfaces: "SparkyLinux 3.0 RC 'Annagerman' is out. The release candidate of SparkyLinux 3 provides a few more changes and system improvement, such as: all packages have been synchronized with Debian 'testing' repositories as of 2013-07-06; Linux kernel 3.9; SparkyBackup system has additional support for JWM desktop; SparkyBackup Apss Copy & Recovery has been enhanced and supports 15 applications now; added new application - sparky-screenshot, a simple GUI for scrot; added new application - sparky-gexec...." Continue to the release announcement for full details. Download: sparkylinux-3.0-rc-x86_64.iso (LXDE and Enlightenment, 1,544MB, MD5), sparkylinux-3.0-rc-x86_64-ultra.iso (Openbox and JWM, 1,338MB, MD5), sparkylinux-3.0-rc-x86_64-mate.iso (MATE, 1,568MB, MD5), sparkylinux-3.0-rc-x86_64-razorqt.iso (MATE, 1,375MB, MD5).

Michael Tremer has announced the release of IPFire 2.13 Core 70, the latest stable release from the project developing open-source software solutions for routers and firewalls: "Today, the IPFire development team released the 70th Core update for IPFire 2. This update comes with a new kernel and some minor enhancements. Another kernel update to Linux 3.2.48 fixes various smaller bugs. In addition to that, we switched back to the official in-tree drivers for Realtek r81xx-based network adapters. The e1000e and igb kernel modules which control Intel Ethernet adapters have been updated as well. IPFire brings some data for wireless networks which basically contains information about which frequencies may be used in which countries. This database has been updated and covers more places in the world." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download: ipfire-2.13.i586-full-core70.iso (102MB, SHA1).

Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 2.1.2-20, a new stable build of the project's specialist live CD designed for disk cloning tasks: "This release of Clonezilla live (2.1.2-20) includes major enhancements and bug fixes: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system was upgraded, this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2013-07-03; Linux kernel was updated to 3.9.8; Partclone was updated to 0.2.66, a better disk cache mechanism was used; the drbl package was updated to 2.4.18 and Clonezilla was updated to 3.5.1; the disk size info will be shown when selecting the images during restoring; a summary of ocs-chkimg will be shown after image is checked; syslinux was updated to 5.01...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a list of bug fixes. Download (MD5): clonezilla-live-2.1.2-20-amd64.iso (121MB), clonezilla-live-2.1.2-20-i686-pae.iso (119MB), clonezilla-live-2.1.2-20-i486.iso (118MB).

Yesterday SUSE released the third service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 "Desktop" and "Server" editions, a set of commercial enterprise-class distributions for desktops and servers: "SUSE today announced the general availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 3. This latest service pack brings additional industry-standard hardware support and open source features and enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, the most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing - across physical, virtual and cloud environments. With Service Pack 3, customers can achieve better workload performance in a more scalable, secure and cost-effective manner. Service Pack 3 gives customers more scale-up and scale-out options to run their mission-critical workloads with support for new hardware, features and enhancements." Read the press release and check out the detailed released notes (desktop, server) for more information. 60-day evaluation editions are available for free download (after registration) from download.novell.com.

John Van Gaans has announced the release of Legacy OS 2.1 "Gamer" edition, a Puppy-based distribution designed for, you've guessed it, PC gaming enthusiasts: "Our best releases coming in 2013 starting with Legacy OS 2.1 Gamer available now. To start things off Legacy OS 2 Gamer has been released. Months of testing and searching the Internet for Pentium III compatible games has resulted in this release. From card games to 3D-type games like Prboom, the open-source release of the classic game Doom, this release will bring many hours of fun for families who can't afford Quad Core Gaming PCs and only have access to Pentium III and 4 PCs. Also included in this release is the Opera 12 web browser with Flash for excellent HTML 5 Internet browsing and the Amarok music player to manage your music collection. Pentium III PCs make great Jukeboxes when connected to a amplifier and a couple of speakers." Read the release information for further details and screenshots. Download: LOS2.1GAMER.iso (695MB, MD5).

Lucas Holt has announced the release of MidnightBSD 0.4, a FreeBSD-derived operating system with a goal to create an easy-to-use desktop environment with graphical ports management: "MidnightBSD 0.4 has been released. It includes many new features, but of particular interest is the new package management tool, mport. This release is a bit different from previous releases in that we plan to update packages during the support period for 0.4. Rather than upload packages and sit on them for the life of the release, you will be able to download updated packages for i386 and amd64 periodically. Due to this new feature, our initial package offering is smaller than we've done for previous releases as many things had to get migrated and updated. We plan to expand the packages available in the coming weeks. In addition to mport, we've imported a large number of features from FreeBSD 9.1." See the rest of the release notes for more details. Download: MidnightBSD-release.iso (amd64, 786MB, SHA256), MidnightBSD-release.iso (i386, 601MB, SHA256).

Artyom Zorin has announced the release of Zorin OS 7 "Lite" and "Educational Lite" editions, two Zorin OS variants based on Lubuntu and featuring the lightweight LXDE desktop environment: "The Zorin OS team is proud to release Zorin OS 7 Lite and Educational Lite, the latest evolution of the Zorin OS Lite series of operating systems, designed specifically for Windows users using old or low-powered hardware. This release is based on Lubuntu 13.04 and uses the LXDE desktop environment to provide one of the fastest and most feature-packed interfaces for low-specification machines. This new release includes newly updated software out-of-the-box, the introduction of new software and a new desktop theme. We also include our innovative Zorin Look Changer, Zorin Internet Browser Manager, Zorin OS Lite Extra Software and other programs from our earlier versions in Zorin OS 7 Lite and Educational Lite." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (MD5): zorin-os-7-lite.iso (786MB), zorin-os-7-educational-lite.iso (1,404MB).

Simplicity Linux is a fast and energy-efficient Linux distribution built from Puppy Linux and featuring the LXDE desktop. A beta build of the upcoming version 13.7 was announced yesterday: "We have officially launched the beta of Simplicity Linux Desktop 13.7. We are currently in the process of uploading Simplicity Linux Obsidian and Netbook 13.7 betas. Media probably won't get a beta release because we are having some issues with it, but it should be ready to go for release on 28th July. The biggest change we've made between alpha and beta is we have officially moved from Carolina Linux as our base to LXPup. We like Xfce, we've been using it for a long time, but we think that LXDE is a better window manager, and if nothing else, it's more energy efficient. Of course, the biggest change you get because we've moved to LXPup is Gslapt." Here is the brief release announcement with a screenshot. Download: SimplicityDesktop137Beta.iso (451MB).

Sam Geeraerts has announced the availability of the second beta release of gNewSense 3.0, a Debian-based Linux distribution built strictly from "libre" components only: "The second beta release of gNewSense 3.0 (code name 'Parkes') is available for download. The following issues have been fixed: the live installer (which can be started with the icon on the live desktop) works now, you also still have the text and GUI install boot menu options; the graphical installer now looks like gNewSense instead of Debian; OpenOffice.org is included in the default install; the boot menu is shorter so that items at the bottom are more easily readable. There's only a live CD for i386 so far. Netboot images will follow shortly. I will provide a live CD for amd64 too, but that needs a bit more work." Here is the brief release announcement as published on the project's mailing list. Download: gnewsense-livecd-parkes-i386-3.0beta2.iso (1,078MB, MD5, torrent).

Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of OS4 OpenLinux 13.5, a user-friendly distribution based on Ubuntu and featuring a customised Xfce desktop environment: "Today we are pleased to announce the availability of the most advanced Linux-based operating system on the planet - OS4 OpenLinux 13.5. With this release we bring lots of enhancements and feature updates to the OS4 OpenLinux operating system. We have made several kernel enhancements that make the default kernel in OS4 OpenLinux that much faster and efficient. Also, many new hardware drivers are included that support more hardware, out of the box. Along with a new logo and an enhanced look and feel from our previous release, we have made OS4 OpenLinux one of the easiest to use operating systems that allow you to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. We have made some new changes in the application line-up." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: openlinux-13-5-64.iso (1,471MB).

Chris Smart has announced the release of Korora 19, a Fedora-based desktop Linux distribution with a choice of GNOME or KDE desktops and with many user-friendly enhancements: "Well, the cat's out of the bag! We are pleased to announce that Korora 19 'Bruce' is now available for download, which for the first time ever coincides with the release of Fedora. Features: GNOME 3.8; KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.10; the Anaconda installer has support for many English locales. Of course this release comes with the usual Korora extras out of the box, such as: third party repositories (Chrome, RPMFusion, VirtualBox); full multimedia support including Adobe Flash plugin; Jockey device manager to handle drivers such as ATI and NVIDIA; Firefox as the default web browser (with integration theme for KDE); Firefox extensions enabled (Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Flashblock, Xclear)...." Continue to the release announcement for more information and upgrade instructions. Download: korora-19-x86_64-kde-live.iso (2,266MB), korora-19-x86_64-gnome-live.iso (1,781MB).

Robyn Bergeron has announced the availability of Fedora 19, the new stable version of the Red Hat-sponsored community distribution of Linux: "The Fedora Project is delighted to announce the release of Fedora 19. What's new? Developer's Assistant is a tool for new developers that helps you to get started on a code project by offering templates, samples, and toolchains for a variety of languages; 3D modelling and printing are supported with OpenSCAD, Skeinforge, SFACT, Printrun, RepetierHost, and other tool options; OpenShift Origin makes it easy for you to build your own Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) infrastructure; MariaDB offers a truly open MySQL implementation and is now the default MySQL option in Fedora...." Read the release announcement and check out the detailed release notes to learn more. Download (mirrors, torrents): Fedora-Live-Desktop-x86_64-19-1.iso (951MB, SHA256, torrent), Fedora-Live-KDE-x86_64-19-1.iso (878MB, SHA256, torrent).

Stefano Fratepietro has announced the availability of the public beta release of DEFT Linux 8, a specialist Lubuntu-based distribution and live DVD with open-source tools for digital forensics and penetration testing: "Here is the new digital forensics system optimized for Intel-based 64-bit architectures - DEFT Linux 8. What's new? a 64-bit 3.5 Linux kernel that has brought down the 4 GB memory limit - now you can use DEFT Linux on systems that have up to 256 TB of RAM; Sleuthkit 4 and Autopsy 2, ready for Autopsy 3 on Linux (only for law enforcement); Digital Forensics Framework 1.3; Libewf and AFFlib full support; Xmount and Mount Ewf; Guymager 0.7.1, Cyclone 0.2 and Esximager; Recoll 1.19.5 - software for indexing; Bulk extractor 1.3.1 with Bulk extractor GUI 1.3; Dumy 0.2 - an intelligence parsing tool to extract sensible data from anonymous dump; Skype extractor...." Here is the full release announcement with a long list of included tools and utilities. Download: deft8_beta.iso (1,607MB, MD5).

James Buren has announced that the second pre-release of Frugalware Linux 1.9, a general-purpose distribution designed for intermediate Linux users, is ready for testing: "This is the second preview release of Frugalware 1.9. Starting with this release, netconfig has been replaced by our new nmconfig tool which uses the NetworkManager framework instead of our original custom network management code. This reduces the amount of custom code we must maintain for our distribution. Also of note is the fact that the entire collection of tools from frugalwareutils has been replaced by the standalone mode of the new installer. The new tools are provided by the package fvbeutils. Some other minor improvements exist, such as the installer's partitioning tool no longer exposing the boot medium as a partitionable device." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download: fvbe-1.9pre2-full-x86_64.iso (1,835MB, SHA1).

Michael Zanetta has announced the availability of the initial beta build of Pentoo 2012.0, a Gentoo-based live DVD featuring a collection of applications and tools designed to perform penetration testing: "The Pentoo team is pleased to announce public beta of Pentoo 2012. Yesterday at Defcon I was able to finally complete building of our brand new beta. I now present to you, the best pen-testing distro I was able to whip out in three days of heavy drinking and partying while walking around with my laptop all of Defcon constantly looking for a source of power to keep compile going. This ISO image has had nearly no QA at all, but I can promise it will rock your socks. I'm not going to say much here, except please try it. (Still 64-bit only for now, sorry.)" Visit the project's home page and its Blogspot page to read the two brief release announcements. Download: pentoo-x86_64-2012.0_betazero.iso (1,458MB, SHA512).

Stella 6.3 is a CentOS remix designed specifically for the desktop - with GNOME 2, working multimedia codecs and many popular desktop applications. The project released version 6.3 yesterday: "Following the release of CentOS 6.3 I finally managed to get Stella 6.3 out as well. This is more an issue of incrementing the numbers since people running Stella have already received the updates from CentOS 6.3. So, what's new in your favourite EL-based remix? Updated multimedia stack - new FFmpeg (0.10.4), MPlayer (1.0svn) and VLC (2.0.3); updated in nux-dextop repository - Clipgrab, Minitube, Audacity 2.0; new inclusions in nux-dextop repository -Megamario (SuperMario clone), Geeqie, Mumble suite, Phantomjs, Tarsnap and SCrypt. Also, as a bit of a news, pkgs.org is now indexing my repositories; as such, searching for EL6 RPMs might give you results from li.nux.ro." Here is the brief release announcement. Download links: Stella6.3_i386.1.iso (1,226MB, MD5), Stella6.3_x86_64.1.iso (1,236MB, MD5).

Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 2012_07_28, a specialist live CD with a large collection of utilities for disk management and data rescue tasks: "The most ambitious release of Parted Magic to-date. LVM hang fixed; garbled Russian translation problem with Clonezilla fixed; added NFS 4 support for Clonezilla; TrueCrypt hang fixed; ROXTerm 2.6.5 replaces LXTerminal; fixed 'cryptsetup luksOpen' bug; SVG icons now look like they are supposed to; added LOG support to iptables kernel driver; HAL has been removed. You can now boot Parted Magic from Linux RAID partitions (/dev/md*). Device Mapper and LUKS Crypt should work in the next release. I'm hoping to get Parted Magic to boot from encrypted USB drives real soon." Visit the project's news page to read the release announcement which includes a brief changelog of updated software packages. Download (MD5): pmagic_2012_07_28.iso (235MB), pmagic_2012_07_28_i486.iso (234MB), pmagic_2012_07_28_x86_64.iso (236MB).

Daisuke Suzuki has announced the release of Vine Linux 6.1, the oldest and most prominent community distribution of Linux in Japan. This release, code-named "Pape Clement", comes after about a year of development and includes the following software applications and features: Linux kernel 3.0.38 with long-term support; Mozilla Firefox 14.0.1 and Thunderbird 14.0; X.Org Intel driver with support for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge microarchitectures; LibreOffice 3.5.5; Adobe Flash Player 11.2 and Adobe Reader 9.4; OpenJDK 1.6 runtime; MPlus Outline and Aoyagi fonts; all errata notices since the release of Vine Linux 6.0. It is recommended that all 6.0 users upgrade to the 6.1 release as soon as possible. Read the release announcement and release notes (both links in Japanese) for system requirements and other information. Download links: Vine61-DVD-i686.iso (1,879MB, SHA1), Vine61-DVD-x86_64.iso (1,911MB, SHA256).

Alexander Tratsevskiy has announced the release of Calculate Linux 12.0, a Gentoo-based distribution for desktops and servers: "Calculate Linux 12.0 released. Major changes: Calculate Utilities 3 are now used to install and set up your system - network client-server solutions via SOAP/WSDL are supported, both console and graphical interfaces are implemented, multiple installations are supported, system settings can now be configured either from the command line or in a graphical environment; Calculate Linux Xfce has a better appearance - the new Adwaita theme, a bigger menu, somewhat better response, Geeqie as the default image viewer; a new start page; GIMP was updated to version 2.8 and has now a one-window interface by default." Read the release announcement for more details and screenshots. Quick link to download the default (CLD) edition with KDE (for other flavours please visit the download page): cld-12.0-i686.iso (2,235MB, MD5, torrent), cld-12.0-x86_64.iso (2,400MB, MD5, torrent).

Bruno Gonçalves has announced the release of BigLinux 12.04, a Kubuntu-based Brazilian distribution for the desktop (with support for Portuguese and English languages). The developers consider this a release candidate, but if no show-stopper bugs are reported within a week, it will become 12.04 final. Some of the changes in this release include: qBittorrent replaces KTorrent; soundKonverter replaces Big Audio Converter; Pidgin replaces Empathy as the preferred instant messaging client; included GIMP 2.8.0 with a single-window mode by default and several additional plugins; default theme remains unchanged, but most packages have been updated from upstream; includes KDE 4.8.4, Firefox 14.0.1, Chromium 18.0.1025.168, LibreOffice 3.5.4. Read the brief release announcement (in Portuguese) as published on the project's user forum. Download the live DVD image from here: BigLinux.12.04.iso (1,346MB, MD5).

Artyom Zorin has announced the availability of two new editions of Zorin OS 6, an Ubuntu-based distribution, designed for students and gamers: "The Zorin OS team has released Zorin OS 6 Educational and Gaming, the education and gaming-oriented editions of our operating system designed for Windows users and those who are dissatisfied with the Unity and GNOME Shell offerings. At the core of Zorin OS 6 lies our new, unique desktop environment named 'Zorin Desktop'. We also include our innovative Zorin Look Changer which allows users to choose between the Windows 7, XP and GNOME 2 graphical interfaces (in Educational) plus the Mac OS X, Unity and Windows 2000 interfaces in Zorin OS Gaming." Here is the full release announcement. The "Gaming" edition joins the project's premium flavours requiring a €7 donation before it can be downloaded, while the "Educational" variant is available free of charge: zorin-os-6-educational-32.iso (1,906MB).

LuninuX OS 12.00, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring a customised GNOME 3 desktop with GNOME Shell, has been released: "Release 12.00 stable. Code-named 'Purple Possum', 12.00 is based on Ubuntu's 12.04 LTS with the latest software upgrade and modifications; this release have great improvements in beauty, speed, responsiveness and reliability. While it was a demanding task, all the feedbacks and recommendations that were gained through the releases of beta 1 and beta 2 helped LuninuX OS 12.00 LTS get better - it will meet more of your needs and essentials than before. You will get great support for software and hardware in the future as well. Here are a few of the software packages included in this release: Chromium, Emerillon, Liferea, Pinta. Thank you and enjoy!" Here is the brief release announcement. Download links: LuninuXOS-12.00-Desktop-i386.iso (1,291MB), LuninuXOS-12.00-Desktop-amd64.iso (1,354MB).

Eric Turgeon has announced that the first beta release of GhostBSD 3, a FreeBSD-based desktop-oriented operating system with GNOME 2, is now ready for testing: "The GNOME 2 beta 1 images for the upcoming GhostBSD 3.0 are now available. This release provides users and developers a system to test out new installer features in the upcoming release. This beta may contain buggy code and features, so we encourage you to run it only on non-critical systems. Changes since stable 1: FreeBSD 9.1-BETA1; new look - more clean and clear; major installer bug has been fixed; the installer bug swamping the entire disk has been fixed; Rhythmbox tray icon has been fixed. New implementation to GhostBSD 3.0 GNOME: FreeBSD 9.1; GNOME 2 and 3 (GNOME 3 will be released later); new graphical installer and new look; support for ZFS; improvements to WiFi...." See the release announcement for further information and bug reporting instructions. Download: GhostBSD-3.0-BETA1-gnome-i386.iso (987MB), GhostBSD-3.0-BETA1-gnome-amd64.iso (1,040MB).

Jeff Hoogland has announced the release of Bodhi Linux 2.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution and live CD featuring the latest Enlightenment 17 desktop: "Bodhi Linux 2.0.0 released. Well boys and girls the wait is finally over. After two months in the making 2.0.0 is officially our stable release. This build features the stable Linux 3.2 kernel, PCManFM file manager, the latest version of the Midori browser and finally the brand spanking new Terminology terminal emulator. Bodhi 2.0.0 is our first stable release to be offered in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. The Bodhi team and I would like to extend our thanks to everyone who made this release possible. Most notably the E17 team and our community of testers!" Read the rest of the release announcement which includes a few screenshots. Download: bodhi-2.0.0-32.iso (449MB, MD5, torrent), bodhi-2.0.0-64.iso (472MB, MD5, torrent).

Andrew Gillis has announced the release of VortexBox 2.1, a Fedora-based distribution designed to turn an unused computer into an easy-to-use music server or jukebox: "This release is a roll-up of a lot of features and fixes we have been working on since the last release. This release includes Logitech Media Server 7.7.2. Backups now support more than 2.2 TB drives. This is great for 3+ TB VortexBoxes. We have the latest Fedora kernel with upgraded audio drives. The new ALSA drives now have better support for USB audio devices. We are now using ALBUMARTIST instead of BAND tag in the FLAC to MP3 mirroring. We have experimental support for some leading-edge features. VortexBox Player now has DSD support. You can play your DSD rips directly. We now support Bluetooth audio devices through VortexBox Player. Blu-Ray ripping is working well but it still not 100%. We added Plex Media Server to the applications available for installation." Here is the full release announcement. Download (MD5): vortexbox-2.1.iso (698MB).

Release candidate two for antiX 12, a lightweight Linux distribution designed for older computers, is ready for final testing: "15 months on from the release of antiX M11 series, we are almost there to release our antiX 12 series. For 99% of users, these RC2 ISO images are ready, but we would also like to get the 1% sorted out before releasing the final. It features five windows managers. IceWM (default), Fluxbox, JWM (all with or without a Rox desktop) wmii (pre-configured to get users started) and dwm. LibreOffice replaces AbiWord and Gnumeric. Iceweasel 10 replaces Iceape, Claws-mail included as email client. Qmmp replaced by XMMS, Yad replaces Zenity, Thunar removed and replaced with SpaceFM and udevil, Cheese removed for Gucview, streamtuner2 replaces streamtuner, Synaptic kept for GUI package management, lots of useful scripts and many other changes." Visit the distribution's news page to read the rest of the release announcement. Download: antiX-12-rc2-486.iso (694MB, MD5).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of the "KDE" edition of Linux Mint 13: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 13 KDE. KDE is a vibrant, innovative, advanced, modern-looking and full-featured desktop environment. This edition features all the improvements from the latest Linux Mint release on top of KDE 4.8. The highlight of this edition is the latest KDE 4.8 desktop, which features the following improvements: Kwin optimizations; redesign of power management and integration with Activities; the first QtQuick-based Plasma widgets have entered the default installation of Plasma Desktop; new display engine in Dolphin; new Kate features and improvements; functional and visual improvements in Gwenview." Read the release announcement and check out the what's new page and the release notes to learn about the new features and known issues. Download (MD5): linuxmint-13-kde-dvd-32bit.iso (915MB, SHA256), linuxmint-13-kde-dvd-64bit.iso (892MB, SHA256).
Also available from OSDisc.

Kendall Weaver has announced the release of Peppermint OS Three, a major new version of the project's lightweight desktop Linux distribution based on Lubuntu: "We are proud to announce the release of Peppermint OS Three in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds. This version is based on Lubuntu 12.04 and, as always, uses some features from the ever-awesome Linux Mint. Here's a quick overview of some of the details associated with this release: the Chromium stable repository is now enabled by default; a very light theme and default artwork; fewer default web applications in the menu as we feel that we'd rather not clog everything up by default; ships with GWoffice by default - this is a desktop Google Docs client that is lightweight and runs completely independent of Chromium; GIMP 2.8 is in the Peppermint repository; Linux Mint's update manager...." See the full release announcement for further information. Download (MD5): Peppermint-3-20120722-i386.iso (533MB), Peppermint-3-20120722-amd64.iso (539MB).

James Buren has announced the availability of the first release candidate for Frugalware Linux 1.7, code name "Gaia", an independently-developed general-purpose Linux distribution designed for intermediate and advanced Linux users: "Frugalware 1.7rc1 (Gaia) released. The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.7rc1, the first candidate of the upcoming 1.7 stable release. Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.7pre2: package updates - Linux kernel 3.4.4, GCC 4.7.1, KDE 4.8.4; new features - installer now supports Btrfs as an experimental feature, installer now supports JFS, grubconfig (our front-end to GRUB 2 installation) can now install to itself to RAID1 mdadm and raw drives with a single option. Please refer to the Frugalware Testing ChangeLog for more information." Here is the very brief release announcement. Download the installation DVD image for the x86_64 processor architecture from here: frugalware-1.7rc1-x86_64-dvd1.iso (4,262MB, SHA1).

Slackware "Current" is now beta - that's according to Patrick Volkerding who wrote the following in today's changelog: "Howdy! Lots of shiny stuff here, including the long awaited Xfce 4.10. Thanks to Robby Workman for the initial set of build scripts, and lots of testing (plus some very helpful notes about things such as the proper build order). I'm calling this a beta (finally!), and it's really very close to what we expect to release. Test away." The changelog also includes a long note on udev: "Well, udev in this development cycle has certainly been interesting. A fair number of odd bug reports have been coming in, and we hadn't really been able to get a handle on the source of the issues. Quite some time ago we started testing udev-182, and noticed that it caused some issues with the persistent net and CD rules." As always, there are no official installation media, but recent builds of unofficial DVD images can be had from here: slackware-current-24_Jul_2012-DVD.iso (2,327MB, MD5), slackware64-current-24_Jul_2012-DVD.iso (2,281MB, MD5).

Silvan Calarco has announced the release of openmamba GNU/Linux 2.0.10.1, an updated version of the project's independently developed distribution featuring the KDE desktop and using the RPM package management format: "The openmamba maintainer is happy to announce the immediate availability of the milestone2 2.0.10.1 release of the openmamba distribution. Features: KDE-based live desktop system for standard personal computers (Intel x86 compatible hardware); top applications include LibreOffice, Chromium, Amarok, Kaffeine, WINE, GIMP, Kopete, Audacity and K3b; 3D graphical desktop support with open and proprietary drivers; automatic hardware detection and configuration; NTFS read and write support using NTFS-3G; fixed disk installation interface." Read the rest of the release announcement for a detailed description of the product and system requirements. Download the base live CD or the all-inclusive live DVD image: openmamba-livecd-en-milestone2-2.0.10.1.i586.iso (681MB, MD5, torrent), openmamba-livedvd-en-milestone2-2.0.10.i586.iso (2,615MB, MD5, torrent).

Pierre Schmitz has announced the release of Arch Linux 2012.07.15 "netinstall" CD image. Since Arch Linux is a strictly rolling-release distribution, this release merely provides an updated system installer and it does not represent a new Arch Linux "version" in the traditional sense of the word. From the announcement: "New CD images containing a current Arch Linux snapshot have been released. Most notable change is that AIF (the Arch Installation Framework) is no longer included but instead some simple install scripts are provided to aid in the installation process. This means that a menu driven installer is no longer available and we rely more on documentation to guide new users. Instead of six different images we only provide a single one which can be booted into an i686 and x86_64 live system to install Arch Linux over the network." Download the new Arch Linux "netinstall" CD image from here: archlinux-2012.07.15-netinstall-dual.iso (483MB, MD5, torrent).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the availability of the Xfce edition of Linux Mint 13, codename Maya. From the what's new page: "The highlight of this edition is the latest Xfce 4.10 desktop, which features the following improvements: online documentation; application finder; multiple rows and deskbar mode in the panel; actions plugin; MIME type editor; single-click operation, automated background image cycling and thumbnail rendering on the desktop; edge-tiling in the window manager. In the past, the xfapplet plugin made it possible for Xfce users to run GNOME applets within the Xfce panel. After talking to the MATE and Xfce developers, we updated this plugin and it now supports MATE applets. Among the many MATE applets that can now run in Xfce, mintMenu is probably the most popular. Improvements were made to mintMenu so that it could support Thunar, the Xfce Settings Manager and other aspects of the Xfce desktop...." See the release announcement including upgrade instructions, and check the release notes for known issues. Download: linuxmint-13-xfce-dvd-32bit.iso (811MB, MD5, torrent), linuxmint-13-xfce-dvd-64bit.iso (795MB, MD5, torrent).
Also available from OSDisc.

After four beta versions and one release candidate, FreeNAS 8.2.0 is available for download, which is a free, open-source, Network-Attached Storage (NAS) operating system based on FreeBSD. From the release announcement: "The FreeNAS development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of FreeNAS 8.2.0-RELEASE. FreeNAS 8.2.0-RELEASE is the first release on new branch of code that incorporates tighter integration between the ZFS command line and the FreeNAS GUI. This release also features the ability to run arbitrary services and interact with them through the FreeNAS GUI in a FreeBSD jail. This jail allows a wide range of third party software to be run on top of FreeNAS, using the PBI format from PC-BSD or FreeBSD packages or ports, as well as official FreeNAS plugins. Additional features include: support for iSCSI target reload; GUI support for SAS and FC multipath hardware; WebShell accessible from the FreeNAS web interface; ZFS scrubs are configurable from the GUI...." Read the press release, the release notes, and an important update to 8.2.0-RELEASE-p1. Download: FreeNAS-8.2.0-RELEASE-p1-x86.iso (96MB, SHA256), FreeNAS-8.2.0-RELEASE-p1-x64.iso (104MB, SHA256).

Pat Riehecky has announced the availability of the first beta version of Scientific Linux 6.3, a distribution built from source packages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and enhanced with extra applications useful in academic environments: "There should be no expectation that a 'yum' upgrade to SL 6.3 will work. A new install is the recommended method to move from 'sl6rolling'(this alpha release) and the released 'SL 6.3'. Major changes the upstream vendor made: LibreOffice - OpenOffice.org has been replaced with LibreOffice. The LibreOffice packages 'provide' the right packages to maintain compatibility for Kickstart and yum installs; Anaconda - Anaconda now alerts users to the beta status of a release when it is tagged appropriately, upstream has added this functionality and we are taking advantage of it for the beta cycle...." Read the full release announcement. Download the DVD images: SL-6.3-i386-DVD.iso (3,464MB, SHA), SL-6.3-x86_64-DVD.iso (4,093MB, SHA).

José Antonio Calvo today announced a beta release of Zentyal 2.3, a small business server for managing various network services: "We are glad to let you know that Zentyal has already entered the feature freeze period for 3.0, meaning that from now on we will be focused on polishing and bugfixing until September. Some of the highlights included in this new version are: first version of the brand new HTTP proxy module, with a much simpler interface and improvements like now it is possible to apply different filter profiles on different time periods; new features on Samba4, allowing to set administrator account or edit general settings without having to disable the module; several improvements in Firewall, OpenVPN and Captive Portal modules, featuring support for SNAT rules, MAC filtering and Captive Portal objects and services exceptions...." Follow the full release announcement. Download: zentyal-2.3-2-i386.iso (614MB, MD5), zentyal-2.3-2-amd64.iso (625MB, MD5).

Kris Moore today announced the first beta build of PC-BSD 9.1, a user friendly desktop operating system based on FreeBSD: "The BETA1 images for the upcoming PC-BSD 9.1 is now available for i386 and amd64 architectures! This beta provides both users and developers a means to test out new features in the upcoming PC-BSD 9.1 release. This snapshot may contain buggy code and features, so users are encouraged to run it only on non-critical systems. Highlights for the upcoming 9.1-release: FreeBSD 9.1; KDE 4.8.4; new system installer greatly simplified for desktop and server installs; new 'PC-BSD Server' installation option - includes command-line utilities like pbi-manager, warden, metapkgmanager and more...." Refer the (updated) release announcement for full information, including ways to upgrade online to this beta. Download the DVD images: PCBSD9.1-BETA1-x86-DVD.iso (3,341MB, SHA256), PCBSD9.1-BETA1-x64-DVD.iso (3,441MB, SHA256).

Linux Deepin, one of the most active community distributions in China, today released its version 12.06 that was originally scheduled for the end of last month. This project employs a half-year release cycle and is highly attractive to Chinese university students. The desktop environment in this release is Deepin GNOME Shell, which is the GNOME Shell adapted to the way users prefer to manage the desktop. Three extensions for Hide Message Tray, Kimpanel, and Panel Settings are introduced for better GUI experience. This release incorporates a number of device drivers, particularly for printers. More fonts were included and thus CJK rendering is better supported. This release can even be installed by running a special DeepWin.exe in a Windows operating system. Featured applications are Deepin Music Player, Deepin Media Player, and Deepin Software Center. Read the complete release announcement (in Chinese). Download (MD5): deepin_12.06_zh-hans_i386.iso (680MB), deepin_12.06_zh-hans_amd64.iso (692MB). Separate CD images with support for English and traditional Chinese are also available from SourceForge.

Although a bit behind the schedule, Ken Smith today announced the first beta version of FreeBSD 9.1, the upcoming release of the project's stable branch: "The first test build of the 9.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for amd64, i386, powerpc64, and sparc64. We hope this will be the only BETA build, to be followed by two Release Candidate builds and then the release itself. If you notice any problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or here on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use csup/cvsup mechanisms to do a source-based update of an existing system the branch tag to use is 'RELENG_9'. If you would like to use SVN instead use 'stable/9'. Note that if you do an update that way the system will call itself '9.1-PRERELEASE'." Check the full release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-9.1-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (523MB, MD5), FreeBSD-9.1-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (637MB, MD5).

Angelo Comazzetto has announced the release of Sophos UTM 9, a network security solution previously known as Astaro Security Gateway and now called Sophos Unified Threat Management: "UTM 9 is a major new version that offers over 60 new features and abilities. We now offer the ability to manage antivirus and device control on your desktops with the same finesse that has made our RED branch office product and integrated wireless management offerings so popular. There is a new captive portal system, allowing you to create wireless hotspots for guests in your company, hotels, coffee shops, or other public places. The Antivirus system has been bolstered with the addition of Sophos' enterprise-class scanner, while UTM 9 remains one of the only products to offer dual scanning engines in parallel to give you extra security and choice. We yet again lead the way with a totally new HTML5 VPN system that is a true clientless system for accessing desktops and servers remotely." Read the full release announcement and the 15-page release notes. Download: asg-9.000-8.1.iso (465MB, MD5).

Steven Shiau has released a new version of GParted Live, a live CD based on the Debian unstable release with graphical tools for disk management and data recovery. From the changelog and the release announcement: "The underlying GNU/Linux operating system is based on the Debian sid repository (as of 2012/Jul/14). The most significant enhancement is with GParted 0.13.0, which now shows when there is a difference between the file system size and the partition size. Thanks to work by Mike Fleetwood this resolves bug #499202 that has been open since 2007. With this new feature, users can learn if there is unallocated space within a partition that can then be put to good use. Another important application change is a fix for bug #678831 which resolves a problem with overlapping partitions when resizing an extended partition. Also new in this release: adds web browser icon to desktop; adds menu button keyboard shortcut to bring up Fluxbox root menu (bug #578842); useful when using GParted Live without a mouse; updates Linux kernel to 3.2.21-3." Download: gparted-live-0.13.0-1.iso (124MB, MD5).

For around a decade only the i386/i486 edition of VectorLinux has been available, which is a Slackware-based distribution optimised for business and office use. Today Robert Lange announced the first 64-bit edition of VectorLinux 7.0 Standard under the name "VLocity": "The main desktop is based on Xfce-4.8 with a custom theme and artwork unique to us. All the VectorLinux trademarks are included: DVD playback, audio and video codecs, multimedia and Java plugins are installed and working out of the box. The best of the open source world is included: GIMP, Inkscape for graphics; Firefox, Opera, for Internet Browsing; pidgin and xchat for instant messaging; Brasero for CD burning; MPlayer, Exaile for playing most available media formats. The office applications are Gnumeric, Abiword and Epdfviewer. Wireless networking has been extended with updated drivers and firmware, wicd has been employed to manage wireless and non-wireless networking. UFW is included for firewall protection and there is added support for several webcam makes and models." Check the forum for the announcement and feedback. Download: VL64-7.0-STD-FINAL.iso (699MB, MD5).

Parted Magic 2012_07_13, a live CD with utilities for disk management and data rescue, has been released: "Major GParted bugfix and feature release! From the GParted site: 'This release of GParted adds the ability to show if partition size differs from file system size. This new feature enables you to identify unallocated space within a partition and can suggest how you can put this space to good use. Also included are bug fixes and language translation updates. Key changes include: Show difference if partition size differs from file system size. Avoid end partition overlap when resizing extended partition.' There are also some other notable changes. Parted Magic now uses the Tango Icon Theme. It creates a very uniform look and feel. Btrfs-progs has been updated to the latest git version so it's possible to create smaller file systems. Udev has been updated to version 182." See the project's news page for the announcement. Download (MD5): pmagic_2012_07_13.iso (233MB), pmagic_2012_07_13_i486.iso (232MB), pmagic_2012_07_13_x86_64.iso (233MB).

Ryan Finnie today announced the availability of Finnix 105, a live CD distribution for system administrators based on Debian's testing branch: "I am pleased to announce the release of Finnix 105, a major architectural update to the Finnix series. Finnix 105 brings major organizational changes to the build and boot systems, along with the usual assortment of software updates. Finnix 105 is the first Finnix release to be produced under Project NEALE (Normalized Extraction and Assembly of LiveCD Environments), a new set of procedures to build Finnix CDs from a minimal base Debian bootstrap. This allows for a consistent build process each time, and between architectures. It also allows for more future options, such as a native userland AMD64 release." See the release announcement and release notes for full information. Download (MD5) the live CD images for x86/amd64 and PowerPC architectures: finnix-105.iso (115MB, torrent), finnix-ppc-105.iso (116MB, torrent).

Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of OS4 12.5, a custom Linux distribution previously known as PC/OS that is based upon Ubuntu and is built for fun, compatibility, security, and mobility: "OS4 12.5 has been designed from the ground up to satisfy the needs of casual PC users all the way to the professional user. It is available in 32 and 64 bit releases. Built for the professional: With OS4 you have a quality multi processing core in your system, and with support for 3D graphics and audio, everyone from the digital animator, video editor, musician all the way to the researchers studying DNA sequencing to working in clusters, OS4 will fit your needs. With a fine set of standard applications, to the extensibility of installing thousands of more applications, OS4 was built for you." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download: os4-12-5x86.iso (1,405MB, MD5), os4-12-5-x64.iso (1,548MB, MD5).

Karanbir Singh has announced the release of CentOS 6.3, the latest version of the enterprise-class Linux distribution derived from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3: "The CentOS team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS-6.3 for i386 and x86_64 Architectures. CentOS-6.3 is based on the upstream release EL 6.3 and includes packages from all variants. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with. There are some important changes to this release compared with the previous versions of CentOS and we highly recommend reading this announcement along with the Release Notes. There is also a minimal install CD that will get you a very small base install that you can add to." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download the installation DVD images from mirrors: CentOS-6.3-i386-bin-DVD1.iso (3,541MB, SHA256, torrent), CentOS-6.3-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso (4,091MB, SHA256, torrent).

Brian Manderville has announced the availability of the second alpha release of Descent|OS 3.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the MATE desktop environment: "I am pleased to announce that Descent|OS Alpha 2 has been released. Lots of packages are now updated, and the MATE desktop seems to be behaving nicely. That said, the only work really left to do until our projected release date of August 29th is mainly cosmetic. The Plymouth theme needs to be changed and branded into a Descent|OS boot screen, and the Ubiquity install slide show has to be done as well. Apart from that, I am confident it can be used daily, but am only calling it another alpha in case more bugs show up and the fact that cosmetics are not completely finished. Happy testing!" Here is the brief release announcement. Interested testers can download the new Descent|OS live DVD image from here: DescentOS-3-alpha2-i386.iso (930MB).

Alan Baghumian has announced the availability of the first test release of Parsix GNU/Linux 4.0, a desktop Linux distribution and live DVD based on Debian's testing branch: "This is the first test version of the upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 4.0 release. This version has been synchronized with Debian's testing repositories as of July 1, 2012 and brings a lot of updated packages. Parsix 'Gloria' is the project's first release with GNOME 3 and ships with LibreOffice productivity suit. Gloria has a brand new software manager. Highlights: GNOME 3.4.2, X.Org 7.6, GRUB 2, GNU Iceweasel 13.0, GParted 0.12.1, Empathy 3.4.2.3, LibreOffice 3.5.4, VirtualBox 4.1.16 and a brand new kernel based on Linux 3.2.20 with TuxOnIce, BFS and other extra patches." Read the release notes a more detailed list of updated packages, known issues and repository information. Download: parsix_4.0r0-test-1-i386.iso (1,021MB, MD5), parsix_4.0r0-test-1-amd64.iso (1,017MB, MD5).

Jay Flood has announced the release of Porteus 1.2, a Slackware-based minimalist live CD set with a choice of KDE 3 (Trinity), KDE 4, Xfce and LXDE desktops: "The Porteus community is proud to announce the release of Porteus version 1.2. Major changes from Porteus 1.1 include: Linux kernel bumped to version 3.4.4; KDE upgraded to 4.8.4; Trinity upgraded to 3.5.13.1 (R14); LXDE upgraded to the latest stable components; Xfce (4.10) editions have been added for both architectures as standalone ISO images; Firefox upgraded to version 13.0.1; replaced wicd with NetworkManager; new and improved applications to handle system configuration; optimized boot time - with current implementation of rc scripts Porteus is one of the fastest booting live Linux distros out there...." Read the rest of the release announcement which includes links to full changelogs. Download: Porteus-v1.2-i486.iso (251MB, MD5), Porteus-v1.2-x86_64.iso (262MB, MD5), Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-i486.iso (206MB, MD5), Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-x86_64.iso (202MB, MD5).

Alexander Tratsevskiy has announced that the first public beta release of Calculate Linux 12, a Gentoo-based distribution for desktops and servers, is available for testing: "We're happy to announce that Calculate Linux 12 has entered its final phase - a beta-testing version is now available. Main features: network client-server solutions via SOAP/WSDL are supported; both console and graphical interfaces are implemented; multiple installations are supported - you can install CL on several storage media at once, locally as well as remotely; system settings can now be configured either from the command line or in a graphical environment; the Xfce edition has a better appearance with the new Adwaita theme." See the release announcement for further details and screenshots. Quick links to download the desktop editions with KDE (CLD) or GNOME (CLDG); for other flavours please see the mirror list: cld-20120702-i686.iso (2,164MB, MD5), cld-20120702-x86_64.iso (2,332MB, MD5), cldg-20120702-i686.iso (1,740MB, MD5), cldg-20120702-x86_64.iso (1,904MB, MD5).

Anke Boersma has announced the release of Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.07, the final update of the project's "Archimedes" series of distribution releases featuring the KDE 4.8 desktop: "The Chakra development team is proud to announce the final 'Archimedes' release, this codename has followed the KDE SC 4.8 series. With this release a big move to /usr/lib has occurred to prepare Chakra for a complete move to systemd, Linux kernel is updated to version 3.4.3, udev to 182, new initscripts used, kmod is at 8, mkinitcpio at 0.8.8, to name a few of the newer base packages included. These base updates made the third 'Archimedes' release no longer usable for simple updates, thus a new ISO image was needed to avoid a situation where new users are confronted with a need to force an update right away." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download (MD5): chakra-2012.07-Archimedes-i686.iso (1,471MB), chakra-2012.07-Archimedes-x86_64.iso (1,454MB).

The DoudouLinux development team has announced the availability of an updated stable release of DoudouLinux, a Debian-based distribution designed for children: "'Gondwana', the stable version of DoudouLinux, has been updated to version 1.2. The changes are the following: official support for Finnish, Galician, and Norwegian (Nynorsk) which increases the number of official languages to 28; the size of the application launcher icons in the advanced activities is now computed based on screen resolution; internal disk partitions of the computer are now mounted read-only at boot; translations and PDF documentation have been updated. This will be the last update to 'Gondwana'. The next stable release will be based on its successor." See the release announcement for more information. Download the English language edition from here: doudoulinux-gondwana-1.2-en.iso (691MB, SHA1). Separate CD images localised into one of the 29 supported languages are also available.

Andrew Wyatt has announced the release of Fuduntu 2012.3, a new quarterly update of the project's rolling-release distribution originally forked from Fedora: "I would like to announce the immediate availability of Fuduntu 2012.3, our third quarterly release for 2012. Like all previous Fuduntu releases, this release follows our tradition of making small incremental distribution improvements that don't sacrifice the stability of our Linux distribution. Existing Fuduntu users have already rolled up to 2012.3, as all of the updates available are released to our stable repository. This cycle focused on many improvements under the hood, including core platform updates like GCC 4.6.3 and Anaconda 16. In addition, Fuduntu now ships GRUB 2 as our default bootloader." Read the detailed release announcement for package updates and driver support notes. Download (SHA1): Fuduntu-2012.3-i686-LiveDVD.iso (931MB, torrent), Fuduntu-2012.3-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso (940MB, torrent).

Ultimate Edition 3.4, now based on Ubuntu 12.04 and featuring the GNOME 3 desktop, has been released: "Ultimate Edition 3.4 was built off Ubuntu 12.04 'Precise Pangolin'. All updates fully applied, old kernels purged, new initrd and vmlinuz rebuilt. Ultimate Edition 3.4 is what 2.6 series was - a stable environment. GNOME, the default environment is rock solid. Ultimate Edition 3.4 has a new GTK+ 3 theme and a comprehensive set of software packages. I have really placed thought and diligence into what this product is. Ultimate Edition 3.4 takes things to a whole new level. It was developed with stability in mind, sorry KDE users, we will catch you in Ultimate Edition 3.5. This OS will be my primary OS for some time to come. That statement alone says a lot for my feeling on this operating system." Here is the brief release announcement with screenshots. Download (MD5): ultimate-edition-3.4-x86.iso (2,922MB), ultimate-edition-3.4-x64.iso (3,080MB).

The second and final release candidate for Frugalware Linux 1.5, a general-purpose distribution for intermediate and advanced users, has been released for final testing: "The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.5rc2, the second candidate of the upcoming 1.5 stable release. Here are some of the improvements, fixes and updates since 1.5rc1: Package updates - Linux Kernel 2.6.39.3, X.Org Server 1.10.3, LXDE updated, 1.0.1 release of the core EFL libraries, Mozilla Firefox 5.0.1, 245 packages updated, 20 new packages. New features: our Vim package gained Python support." Read the brief release announcement and check out the comprehensive changelog for further details. Download the installation DVD image from here: frugalware-1.5rc2-i686-dvd1.iso (4,262MB, SHA1).

Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 6.4, a small utility distribution with specialist software for data rescue and disk partitioning tasks: "Parted Magic 6.4. Lots of updates, bug fixes and new features. Parted Magic's kernel is updated to 3.0 and SMP support was removed from the i486 kernel. Some people were having issues with the nouveau X.Org driver, so an option was added to the failsafe menu to revert back to the nv driver. If you add 'clonezilla' to the kernel command line at boot time, you are brought directly into Clonezilla. There are some major improvements in handling of Radeon and Mobile4 video cards. Some major updates on popular core programs as well. Firefox was updated to 5.0, Clonezilla to 1.2.9-19, and GParted to 0.9.0." Visit the project's home page to read the release announcement. Download (MD5): pmagic-6.4.iso-i686.zip (170MB), pmagic-6.4.iso-x86_64.zip (171MB).

FranÃ§ois Dupoux has released a new version of SystemRescueCd, a Gentoo-based live CD containing a variety of utilities for disk management and data rescue tasks. One of the major items in this version is the brand-new Linux kernel 3.0. From the changelog: "Updated alternative kernels to Linux 3.0 (altker32 + altker64); ipdated firmware in both the initramfs and in the main file system; added support for Linux 3.0 in genkernel; Linux kernel modules are gzipped in the embedded initramfs to save memory; fixed busy CPU in the terminal by downgrading VTE to 0.26.3; updated Parted to 2.4 and GParted to 0.9.0; updated Portage to 2.1.10; updated TestDisk to 6.12; updated Firefox to version 5." Download the live CD image from here: systemrescuecd-x86-2.3.0.iso (347MB, SHA256).

Garrett D'Amore has announced the release of NexentaStor 3.1, an enterprise-class storage solution built upon the foundation of the OpenSolaris-based Nexenta Core Platform: "After a long and arduous release cycle, I am pleased to report that NexentaStor 3.1 is available now. This release includes a number of key features, including some significant improvements for performance and manageability. Folks using SCSI target mode will probably see the biggest performance boost relative to earlier versions of NexentaStor, especially those folks using NexentaStor to serve up storage to VMware guests -- thanks to the VAAI offload support that is part of this release. And yes, this release includes the fix the long-standing problem with iSCSI timeouts. For ZFS fans, this release also includes the updates for ZFS version 28." Read the complete release announcement for further information. Download (MD5): NexentaStor-Community-3.1.0.iso.zip (580MB).

Scientific Linux 6.1, a free "clone" of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 enhanced with extra software, has been released: "Scientific Linux 6.1 is now officially released and available." Some of the changes since 6.0 include: "A whole new graphical theme called 'Edge Of Space'; we pulled the 'fastbugs' and 'testing' repositories out of the repository file that comes with sl-release, they are now in their own RPM called yum-conf-sl-other. Added several packages to Scientific Linux that are not found anywhere on the Enterprise releases: IceWM - a fast and small X11 window manager; OpenAFS - a distributed file system...." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download: SL-61-i386-Install-DVD.iso (3,607MB, SHA256), SL-61-x86_64-Install-DVD.iso (4,184MB, SHA256). Installable live CD (with GNOME) and live DVD images (with GNOME, KDE and IceWM) are also available: SL-61-i386-LiveCD.iso (699MB, SHA256), SL-61-x86_64-2011-07-27-LiveCD.iso (699MB, SHA256).

Gonzalo Velasco has announced the release of Poseidon Linux 4.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution with focus on scientific computing: "Poseidon Linux 4.0 is here. Our new release is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (with 3 years of updates guaranteed by Canonical) as our goals are stability, usability and support for the whole system when used professionally at universities, institutes, colleges and at home. Poseidon Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution designed for the academic and scientific community; it includes a large number of scientific applications, covering areas such as: GIS and geostatistics, visualization, mathematics, statistics, physics, chemistry, CAD, engineering, computer graphics, image editing and vector drawing, numeric modelling and simulation, scientific graphs, scientific authoring...." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement. Download: Poseidon_Linux4_32bit.iso (3,731MB, MD5).

Eugeni Dodonov has announced the availability of the second (and last) release candidate for Mandriva Linux 2011: "Today Mandriva and ROSA teams proudly announce that Mandriva 2011 RC2 is available for download. In this release candidate we fixed more than 300 bugs and added or changed about 700 packages. Here are main changes since RC1: we added VirtualBox guest additions by default, now testing in VirtualBox gives more pleasure than ever; minor fixes in programs for configuring pptp/vpn/wi-fi; more network cards from Atheros and Intel are supported; restored some old and added some new Epson, HP and Lexmark printer drivers; now USB 3G is supported much better; we are working hard to improve KDM and Dolphin...." Check out the release announcement for a full changelog and a list of known bugs. Download: Mandriva.2011.RC2.i586.2.iso (1,643MB, MD5, torrent), Mandriva.2011.RC2.x86_64.2.iso (105MB, MD5, torrent).

Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 1.2.9-19, a new stable version of the project's Debian-based live CD designed for disk cloning tasks: "This release of Clonezilla Live (1.2.9-19) includes major enhancements, changes and bug fixes: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system was upgraded, this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2011-07-22; Linux kernel was updated to 2.6.39; Partclone was updated to 0.2.24; Pbzip2 was updated to 1.1.4; Brazilian Portuguese language was added; the Samba file system with hidden share can now be assigned in boot parameter 'ocs_prerun'; xz compression instead of gzip method was used when making Squashfs, therefore the Clonezilla Live ISO image and ZIP file are smaller by about 31 MB...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete list of changes. Download (MD5): clonezilla-live-1.2.9-19-i486.iso (102MB), clonezilla-live-1.2.9-19-amd64.iso (105MB).

Artyom Zorin has announced the release of Zorin OS 5 "Lite", a Lubuntu-based distribution featuring the LXDE desktop environment: "The Zorin OS team is proud to release Zorin OS 5 Lite, the lightweight edition of our operating system designed for Windows users using old and low-specification computers. We have released this version ahead of schedule. This new version of Zorin OS Lite is based on Lubuntu 11.04 and uses the LXDE desktop environment, which brings new and updated packages. Many program changes were also made to increase size efficiency and to improve the overall experience. Most notable in this release is that it can now fit on a CD. We have removed WINE, VLC, a few games and other programs to save space and included them into our new and exclusive program, the 'Zorin OS Lite Extra Software'." The release announcement. Download: zorin-os-5-lite-32.iso (660MB, MD5).

Karanbir Singh has announced the release of CentOS 6.0 "Live", a set of installable live CD and DVD images based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0: "We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS 6.0 live CD for i386 and x86_64 architectures. The CentOS 6.0 live CD is meant to be a Linux environment suited to be run directly from either CD media or USB storage devices. Due to space constraints, it was not possible to include all the traditional desktop applications on the live CD. You can though enjoy a GNOME basic desktop, view and modify pictures with gThumb and the GIMP, browse the web with Firefox, send emails with Thunderbird and connect to your favorite instant messaging network with Pidgin." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download: CentOS-6.0-i386-LiveCD.iso (684MB, SHA256), CentOS-6.0-i386-LiveDVD.iso (1,615MB, SHA256), CentOS-6.0-x86_64-LiveCD.iso (689MB, SHA256), CentOS-6.0-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso (1,634MB, SHA256).

José Antonio Calvo has announced the availability of the first release candidate for Zentyal 2.2, an Ubuntu-based small server distribution: "The Zentyal development team is glad to announce the availability of the 2.2-rc1 installer. This is the first release candidate for the 2.2 stable series. As the beta releases have ended, it means that this version comes already with all the Zentyal 2.2 features. From now on, all the focus will be on bug fixing, polishing details and also preparing an easy migration process from 2.0 to 2.2. Regarding the changes since the last 2.1-2 release, we want to highlight the following: based on the fresh new Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS; administrator audit logging; Zarafa 7 integration; usability and performance improvements; many improvements in the VM management module." Read the rest of the release announcement for information about bug reporting and known issues. Download: zentyal-2.2-rc1-i386.iso (547MB, MD5), zentyal-2.2-rc1-amd64.iso (510MB, MD5).

Arne Fitzenreiter has announced the release of IPFire 2.9 Core 50, a new update of the specialist Linux-based distribution for firewalls: "Today, we release the 50th update of IPFire 2.9. In Core 50 there are updates to Squid (3.1.14), Python (2.7.2), Apache (2.2.19), smartmontools and collectd. From now on, IPFire is installable and configurable in Polish language and there have been a couple of small issues removed on the web user interface. Since 44 months and 50 core updates, IPFire is working better than on the first day. The developers keep working on little updates that improve the base system and add-ons, but also bring major updates along the way. That is why the system runs great on recent hardware and keeps up with new technologies. Special attention is paid to safety-critical problems. Many security issues of third party packages have been patched, tested and delivered within a couple of hours." Here is the "anniversary" announcement. Download (SHA1): ipfire-2.9.i586-full-core50.iso (68.1MB, torrent).

Ryan Finnie has announced the release of Finnix 102, a Debian-based live CD for system administrators: "Today marks the release of Finnix 102, the eighteenth release of Finnix since its beginnings over ten years ago. Finnix 102 includes Linux kernel 3.0, a smaller distribution size, new Xen pvops and 486 support, and minor bug fixes. Finnix 102 includes the recently-released Linux 3.0 kernel, and is a slight departure from usual Finnix method of closely following Debian kernel development. Configuration management was based on Debian pre-release kernels, but patch management was handled internally, basing only partly on Debian. Linux 3.0 support was tested heavily throughout the Linux 3.0-rc process. Finnix 102 includes XZ (LZMA2) compression of the compressed root and initrd." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional details. Download (MD5): finnix-102.iso (114MB, torrent), finnix-ppc-102.iso (116MB, torrent).

Steven Shiau has announced the release of GParted LiveCD 0.9.0-6, a new stable version of the useful utility live CD designed for data rescue and disk partitioning tasks. This release includes the new GParted 0.9.0 and the CD image is now compressed with xz instead of gzip. From the release notes: "This is GParted Live 0.9.0-6. New in this release: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository (as of 2011-07-23); new GParted 0.9.0; Parted was rolled back to 0.2.3-7 with the patch file fix-head-size-assertion.patch from Ubuntu; Linux kernel 2.6.39-3 is used; xz compression instead of gzip method was used when making Squashfs and initrd, therefore the GParted Live ISO image and ZIP file are smaller by about 24 MB." Download the live CD image from here: gparted-live-0.9.0-6.iso (104MB, MD5).

George Vlahavas has announced the release of Salix OS 13.37 "KDE" edition, a Slackware-based desktop distribution: "Salix KDE 13.37 images are now available to download. This release includes KDE 4.5.5, the same as in Slackware 13.37. One major difference since our previous release is the inclusion of the Mozilla Firefox 5.0 web browser in place of Konqueror. We believe that Firefox has improved a lot with its latest releases and provides a better web experience compared to Konqueror. However, if any users want Konqueror back, they only have to install the 'kdebase' package using the package manager, replacing the default kdebase-lite package. Another important change is the switch from Kaffeine to Bangarang as the default media player." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information. Download (MD5): salix-kde-13.37.iso (674MB, torrent), salix64-kde-13.37.iso (651MB, torrent).

Kate Stewart has announced the release of Ubuntu 10.04.3 and Kubuntu 10.04.3, a maintenance update to the projects' latest releases with long-term support: "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS, the third maintenance update to Ubuntu's 10.04 LTS release. This release includes updated server, desktop, alternate installation CDs and DVDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures. The Kubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Kubuntu 10.04.3. This release includes updated images for the desktop and alternate installation CDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures. Numerous updates have been integrated, and updated installation media have been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation." See the release announcement and the detailed summary of changes for more information. Download: ubuntu-10.04.3-desktop-i386.iso (688MB, SHA256), ubuntu-10.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso (689MB, SHA256), kubuntu-10.04.3-desktop-i386.iso (696MB, SHA256), kubuntu-10.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso (699MB, SHA256).

Red Hat has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.7, a new update of the legacy 5.x series: "Red Hat today announced the general availability of the seventh update to its Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7. This release is important for our customers who wish to remain on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 while gaining some of the benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Key highlights of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 include: support for new hardware delivered in 2011, including Intel, AMD, POWER and IBM System z; encompasses processors, chipsets and new drivers for storage, networking, and graphics; introducing Subscription Manager to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 - enables improved tracking of subscriptions and usage; first introduced in RHEL 6.1...." Read the release announcement, the press release and the release notes for further details. The new installation DVD images are available to existing RHEL subscribers via Red Hat Network.

Just four days after the arrival of the first development release, the second beta of Kororaa Linux 15 is now out and ready for testing: "The second beta release of Kororaa 15 (code name 'Squirt') has been released and is available for download, in 32-bit and 64-bit variants with KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3. This release fixes the black screen issue that some users were reporting, as well as having the desktop theme customisations for KDE (as well as GNOME) correctly applied. The GNOME 3 desktop has a custom theme applied, as well as several extensions to provide an enhanced user experience. The KDE desktop has a custom layout with specific default applications, such as Firefox for the web and VLC for media." The release announcement. Download (MD5): Kororaa-15-Beta2-i686-Live-KDE.iso (1,548MB), Kororaa-15-Beta2-i686-Live-GNOME.iso (1,321MB), Kororaa-15-Beta2-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso (1,557MB), Kororaa-15-Beta2-x86_64-Live-GNOME.iso (1,350MB).

Rubén Rodríguez Pérez has announced the availability of the first alpha release of Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution built strictly from free software components only: "The first development release of Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0 LTS, code name 'Dagda', is now ready for testing. All the artwork comes from the 4.5 release unmodified, so it qualifies as an alpha release. What's new: based on Ubuntu 11.04, Linux-Libre kernel 2.6.38, GNOME 2.32, Firefox 5.0, LibreOffice 3.3.0. Known bugs: icons in GNOME tray have no fixed size; the default manual in yelp is the Ubuntu user guide; Exaile doesn't come pre-configured; the recovery menu lets you log in as root with no password." The brief release announcement has information about the bug reporting procedure. Interested alpha testers can download the live CD images from here: trisquel_5.0-20110720_i686.iso (682MB, MD5), trisquel_5.0-20110720_amd64.iso (701MB, MD5).

Lightweight Portable Security (LPS), created by USA's Department of Defence, is a small Linux live CD focusing on privacy and security while using online services. A new maintenance release was announced earlier today: "A new version of LPS (1.2.2) has been released and is accessible via the web. Changes: fixed a problem with iMac Radeon video drivers; fixed problem with trackpad not working on older MacBooks; Rdesktop - enabled compression to improve performance, fixed problem with cursor control keys not working properly; updated NVIDIA display driver to version 275.09.07; added UVC USB web camera support; added minicom 2.4 as a serial port terminal emulator under the Communications menu; updated Firefox to 3.6.19; updated DOD Configuration add-on to 1.3.1; updated Gmail S/MIME add-on to 0.5.2; updated Flash to 10.3.181.34." Here is the complete changelog. Download: LPS-1.2.2_public.iso (135MB).

Bill Reynolds has announced the release of PCLinuxOS 2011-07 "Phoenix Xfce" edition: "PCLinuxOS Phoenix edition 2011-07 is now available for download. PCLinuxOS Phoenix edition 2011 live CD comes with the latest versions of most popular programs such as Xfce 4.8, Firefox 5.0, Thunderbird 3.1.11 just to name a few. OpenOffice.org Manager has been replaced with LibreOffice Manager. Due to the limited size of the live CD the office suite is not included but can be installed through the LibreOffice Manager either in live CD mode (3 GB of memory required) or preferably after hard drive installation. Addlocale has updated translations and can convert a PCLinuxOS installation into over 70 different languages. The software included on the live CD was based on community feedback as to what the PCLinuxOS users wanted to be included by default." Read the rest of the release announcement a more complete list of changes and features. Download: pclinuxos-phoenix-2011-07.iso (620MB, MD5).

The regular monthly re-spins of Chakra GNU/Linux 2011.04, a desktop distribution originally forked from Arch Linux, continue with the latest update: "The Chakra development team is proud to announce the second respin of 'Aida'. We added lots of package updates and KDE got updated to 4.6.5 with our patches added. Also we updated our hardware detection and added the latest drivers. So what changed with this release: CInstall, our bundle handler got a fresh user interface; Burg theme got updated; complete rewrite of our init scripts; support for systemd added (installation via repositories); small fixes to some packages. Other features to mention: Linux kernel 2.6.39 series; X.Org 7.6 stack with Mesa 7.10.3 and X.Org Server 1.10.3...." See the full release announcement for more details. Download: chakra-2011.04-r2-i686.iso (654MB, MD5), chakra-2011.04-r2-x86_64.iso (676MB, MD5).

Alan Baghumian has announced the availability of the third and final test release of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7, a desktop distribution (with GNOME 2.32) based on Debian's testing branch: "This is the third and last official testing release of the Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7 series which is being released after several months of testing and development. Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7 brings tons of updated packages, faster live boot and quality new features. This version has been synchronized with Debian testing repositories as of Feb 7, 2010. It has a brand-new, light and fast look and feel. Features: NetworkManager 0.8.1 as the default networking stack, GRUB 2 bootloader and ext4 file system, X.Org 7.5. Highlights: GNOME 2.32.1, Iceweasel 5.0, GParted 0.8.1, Empathy 2.30.3, OpenOffice.org 3.2.1, Compiz-Fusion 0.8.4 and, VirtualBox 4.0.4." The release notes have all the details. Download: parsix_3.7r0-TEST-3-i386.iso (948MB, MD5), parsix_3.7r0-TEST-3-amd64.iso (960MB, MD5).

Chris Smart has announced that the first beta release of Kororaa Linux 15, a Fedora-based desktop distribution with user-friendly enhancements, is ready for testing: "Kororaa 15 "Squirt" beta released. The first beta release of Kororaa 15 (code name 'Squirt') has hit the mirrors, and is available for download, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavours with KDE and GNOME. Updated to Fedora Remix 15, it comes with the usual Kororaa extras out of the box: third-party repositories such as RPMFusion, Google Chrome, VirtualBox, Adobe Flash, etc; full multimedia support (Flash installable via script on desktop). New features: updated Fedora Remix 15; customised GNOME 3." Here is the release announcement with a screenshot. Download (MD5): Kororaa-15-Beta-i686-Live-KDE.iso (1,545MB), Kororaa-15-Beta-i686-Live-GNOME.iso (1,310MB), Kororaa-15-Beta-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso (1,540MB), Kororaa-15-Beta-x86_64-Live-GNOME.iso (1,324MB).

Sylvain Balbous has announced the release of PapugLinux 11.1, a minimalist, Gentoo-based live CD featuring the Fluxbox window manager, some development tools and several version control system programs: "PapugLinux 11.1 is available for download, this is a major release in term of package updates. We choose to focus our additions on development tools for this version. The great Python language comes in 2 versions (2.7 and 3.1) and we also include Subversion and the very popular Git as version control systems. This could make PapugLinux a great bundle to start to learn Python or simply browse the open-source projects all over the world. The live running mode uses new tools and another compression format, this results in more content in a smaller size." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: papuglinux-11.1a.iso (258MB, MD5).

Robert Gabriel has announced the release of Kongoni GNU/Linux 2011, a Slackware-based desktop distribution built exclusively from libre software: "I'm very happy to announce the stable release of Kongoni 2011 (code name 'Firefly'). Most bugs and glitches have been removed and we can say now that Kongoni is ready for the stable release. Some extensive work has gone into the live CD and initrd. We have moved to initramfs for the live CD, udev is used now and there is no limitation in space when creating the initramfs as we dropped dd and mkfs.ext2 in favor of cpio. This also should make the live CD a bit faster and much more reliable. KDE has been updated to version 4.6.5 due to some bug fixes, IceCat updated to version 5.0, Gnash updated to version 0.8.10-dev, BackInTime 1.0.8 added as a default backup tool and LibreOffice 3.4.1 is now available in the repository." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download: kongoni-2011-i486-stable.iso (664MB, MD5).

Miklós Vajna has announced the availability of the first release candidate for Frugalware Linux 1.5, a general-purpose, community-built distribution designed for intermediate and advanced Linux users: "The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.5rc1, the first candidate of the upcoming 1.5 stable release. Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.5pre2: package updates - KDE 4.6.5, Mozilla Firefox 5.0, LibreOffice 3.4.1, FFmpeg 0.8. New features: the setuptools Python package is now replaced by distribute; our gdb package gained Python support." See the brief release announcement and refer to the detailed changelog to follow the progress towards the stable Frugalware 1.5. Interested testers can download the installation DVD image from here: frugalware-1.5rc1-i686-dvd1.iso (4,265MB, SHA1).

Troy Dawson has announced the availability of the first of the two planned release candidates for Scientific Linux 6.1: "The first release candidate for Scientific Linux 6.1 has been released. Everything is looking very stable. We will let release candidate 1 (RC1) sit for a week and a half so people can find any last-minute bugs. If everything goes well we expect RC2 on July 26, with the final release later that week. Changes since beta 2: sl-indexhtml - fixed minor typos, de-DE, ja-JP, fr-FR translations; sl-release - updated yum configurations to point to 6.1 instead of 6rolling; sl-revisor-configs - added iso_label and iso_basename to revisor.conf entries, changed all configurations in conf.d to be 6x instead of 6.0; yum-conf-sl-other - changed fastbugs and debuginfo from 6rolling to $releasever." Read the brief release announcement for a more complete changelog. Download: SL-61-i386-2011-07-14-Install-DVD.iso (3,607MB, SHA256), SL-61-x86_64-2011-07-14-Install-DVD.iso (4,184MB, SHA256).

Bill Reynolds has announced the release of PCLinuxOS 2011.07 "KDE MiniMe" edition. This product is designed for more advanced users who prefer to install a minimal KDE-based (version 4.6.5) system and extend it later via the distribution's online repositories. From the release announcement: "PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe 2011.07 for 32-bit computers (works on 64-bit computers too) is now available for download. What's new? The kernel was updated to version 2.6.38.8. Additional kernels, such as a PAE kernel for computers with more than 4 GB of memory, are available from our repositories. A BFS kernel for maximum desktop performance and a standard kernel with group scheduling enabled. X.Org Server was updated to version 1.10.3. Mesa updated to 7.10.3 and libdrm to version 2.4.26." Download: pclinuxos-kde-minime-2011.07.iso (460MB, MD5).

Yuriy Stanchev has announced the release of NetSecL 3.2, a hardened openSUSE-based distribution with tools for penetration testing, but also suitable as a general desktop product: "NetSecL 3.2 comes with a brand new LXDE which increased dramatically the performance, we closed many bugs and also gained more compatibility with openSUSE 11.4. The grsecurity kernel is updated to 2.6.32.8, please check installation instructions if you wish to use it. And here is the work we have done: ext4 issue with grsecurity is resolved; booting in VM with new grsecurity resolved; new Metasploit; Firefox 5; updated Exploit-db repository; grsecurity kernel, locked from zypper - you can update the whole system without worrying; Snort-inline reintegrated (get Snort rules and change them to drop; size of the ISO image smaller by 200 MB." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information. Download the live DVD image: NetSecL.i686-3.2.0.iso (1,037MB, MD5).

Ivo Georgiev has announced the release of Linvo GNU/Linux 2010.12.6, a Slackware-based (installable) live DVD with GNOME 2.32, custom package manager, multimedia codecs support and other user-friendly features: "Linvo 2010.12.6. This is probably the last maintenance release of the GNOME-powered 2010.12 series. It features a couple of bug fixes (e.g. dependency handling) and improvements (e.g. smooth download progress bar) to LinvoApp, the distinctive applications management system. Unfortunately, some applications (mostly obsolete) have been removed from the website because they were not built right by the LinvoApp automatic builder, so now we're down to only 125 applications. Of course, LinvoApp is still beta and you can always use the traditional Gslapt to install software if you miss something which is not in the Applications category." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (MD5): linvo-2010.12.6-x86.iso (737MB).

Josh Paetzel has announced the availability of the last (again!) beta release of FreeNAS 8.0.1, a FreeBSD-based system providing free Network-Attached Storage (NAS) services: "This is the last beta planned for the 8.0.1 release cycle. This line was present in the beta 3 release notes as well. Beta 3 contained several fairly significant bugs, and a patch release was planned to address them, unfortunately due to a myriad of issues that patch release was delayed enough that doing another beta made more sense than any sort of patch. Changes since beta 3: ACLs and UNIX file system permissions work properly on both UFS and ZFS volumes; changes to link aggregations which resulted in a regression in functionality have been reverted...." See the release announcement for a list of bug fixes completed in this release. Download (SHA256): FreeNAS-8.0.1-BETA4-i386.iso (107MB), FreeNAS-8.0.1-BETA4-amd64.iso (111MB).

Stefan Lippers-Hollmann has announced the release of aptosid 2011-02, a desktop distribution based on Debian's unstable branch and featuring the latest KDE and Xfce desktops: "Now that kernel 2.6.39 and KDE 4.6 have entered the archive and stabilised in sid after the 'Squeeze' release, we have the pleasure to announce the immediate availability of the final aptosid 2011-02 'Imera' release. New features in aptosid 2011-02 are numerous integration and stabilisation fixes. Kernel 2.6.39 doesn't only improve and stabilise hardware support for newer devices, it also improves latency and general system performance. Starting with KDE 4.6 and Xfce 4.8, HAL has now become obsolete and got replaced by event-driven udev-based alternative which allows to run common desktop setups without the HAL daemon. Read the detailed release notes for more information. Download (SHA256): aptosid-2011-02-kde-full-i386-amd64.iso (1,960MB), aptosid-2011-02-xfce-i386.iso (468MB), aptosid-2011-02-xfce-amd64.iso (473MB).

Just announced - a new minor update to Superb Mini Server (SMS), a Slackware-based distribution for servers: "Superb Mini Server version 1.6.1 released (Linux kernel 2.6.39.3). This minor release upgrade brings the latest stable Linux kernel version 2.6.39.3. SMS 1.6.1 features the latest stable releases of various packages, such as Perl 5.14.1, MySQL 5.1.58, Postfix 2.8.4, CUPS 1.4.7, httpd 2.2.19, Samba 3.5.9 and GCC 4.5.3. In SMS.Native.CD-Extra.iso added trunk version of iscsitarget package, an open source iSCSI target, built for stock SMP kernel (2.6.39.3-smp), and latest sources of OpenbravoERP MP0.1. SMS now has officially a wiki page with video tutorials and basic tasks for configuring SMS in various situations. There is also an smsdoc.pdf book in PDF format, which will be updated frequently. Read the rest of the release announcement for a full changelog. Download: SMS.Live.CD-1.6.1.iso (401MB, MD5), SMS64.Live.CD-1.6.1.iso (414MB, MD5).

CentOS 6.0, a Linux distribution built from source RPM packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0, has been released: "We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS 6.0 for i386 and x86_64 architectures. CentOS 6.0 is based on the upstream release EL 6.0 and includes packages from all variants. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with. There are no CD images being released with CentOS 6, however we have some CD variants in the pipeline. Since upstream has a 6.1 version already released, we will be using a Continuous Release repository for 6.0 to bring all 6.1 and post 6.1 security updates to all 6.0 users, till such time as CentOS 6.1 is released. Read the release announcement and release notes for detailed information and upgrade instructions. Download (mirror list): CentOS-6.0-i386-bin-DVD.iso (4,487MB, SHA256, torrent), CentOS-6.0-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso (4,042MB, SHA256, torrent).

Antoni Norman has announced the release of a special edition of Pinguy OS for netbooks, an Ubuntu-based distribution with a custom user interface, power-saving features, and extra WiFi drivers: "Pinguy has released Ping-Eee OS 11.04, an Ubuntu-based remaster especially designed for netbooks. It comes with Jupiter (which has Super Hybrid Engine support) and Granola to help with the power consumption and most applications from Pinguy OS: Docky, Nautilus Elementary, Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, LibreOffice, Dropbox, Deluge, Empathy, VLC, DéjÃ Dup backup tool, Linux Mint Update Manager, WINE and more. There's also Clementine instead of Rhythmbox. Ping-Eee OS also comes with extra WiFi drivers for many devices which are not normally supported out of the box on other Linux distributions. Here is the full release announcement. Download: Ping-Eee_OS_11.04.1_i686.iso (1,405MB, MD5).

Urs Beyerle has announced the release of live CD and live DVD variants of Scientific Linux 5.6: "About two weeks after the official release of Scientific Linux 5.6, the Scientific Linux live CD/DVD 5.6 can now be downloaded for 32-bit and 64-bit processors. Features: can be installed to local hard disk; runs from USB key; changes can be stored persistently on an external device; can be mounted over NFS (diskless client). Software: Linux kernel 2.6.18, OpenAFS client 1.4.14, X.Org 7.1, ALSA libraries 1.0.17, GNOME 2.16.0 (standard desktop), GIMP 2.2.13, OpenOffice.org 3.1.1, Firefox 3.6.18, Thunderbird 2.0.0.24, KDE 3.5.4 (only on live DVD). Software added compared to standard Scientific Linux: FUSE NTFS-3G (read/write NTFS support), ntfsprogs, GParted.... Read the rest of the release announcement for more information. Quick links to download the live CDs: livecd_SL56_gnome_2011-07-06.iso (697MB, MD5), livecd64_SL56_gnome_2011-07-06.iso (698MB, MD5). On a related note, the second beta of Scientific Linux 6.1 was also released today.

Tony Sales has announced the release of Vinux 3.2.1, an Ubuntu-based distribution for designed for visually impaired users: "Vinux 3.2.1 is now available for download. The main difference between this and the recently released Vinux 3.2 is that by default it boots with PulseAudio running in 'user' mode rather than 'system' mode. This prevents PulseAudio from crashing at boot on a small number of sound cards, but it means that Speakup is not available from the live CD or immediately after installation. However, there are now two simple commands for switching PulseAudio from user to system mode in conjunction with a reboot of the machine. This version also includes an accessible Zenity front-end for UNetbootin which allows users to install Vinux to a USB pen drive with persistent storage. Visit the distribution's news page to read the full release announcement. Download (MD5): Vinux-3.2.1-i386-DVD.iso (977MB), Vinux-3.2.1-amd64-DVD.iso (1,054MB).

Kate Stewart has announced the availability of the second alpha release of Ubuntu 11.10, code name "Oneiric Ocelot": "Welcome to Oneiric Ocelot alpha 2, which will in time become Ubuntu 11.10. Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone images that will be released throughout the Oneiric development cycle. New packages showing up for the first time include: Linux Kernel 3.0-rc5, GCC 4.6.1 compiler, Firefox 5.0, Thunderbird 5.0, a Mesa 7.11 snapshot. Alpha 2 ships GNOME 3.0, with some parts already upgraded to the 3.1.2 alpha releases. Unity, the theme, and Ayatana scrollbars were updated for GTK+/GNOME 3. See the release announcement and release notes for full details about this alpha build. Download (SHA256): oneiric-desktop-i386.iso (714MB, torrent), oneiric-desktop-amd64.iso (709MB, torrent). Xubuntu 11.10 alpha 2 (download) and Edubuntu 11.10 alpha 2 (download) can be obtained from usual locations, but Kubuntu 11.10 alpha 2 images will not be available.

Marco Ghirlanda has announced the release of ArtistX 1.1, an Ubuntu-based distribution with a large collection of applications designed for creative artists: "After many years of continuous development and ten versions, the ArtistX 1.1 multimedia studio on a DVD is finally here. It's an Ubuntu 11.04-based live DVD that turns a common computer into a full multimedia production studio. ArtistX 1.1 is created with the Remastersys software for live DVDs and includes the 2.6.38 Linux kernel, GNOME 2.32 and KDE 4.6, Compiz Fusion and about 2,500 free multimedia software packages, nearly everything that exists for the GNU/Linux operating system organized in the GNOME menu. Main features: based on Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal' with all updates (from April 2011), Compiz for 3D desktop effects; most of GNU/Linux multimedia packages and the very easy Ubiquity installer." Visit the distribution's home page to read the release announcement and to learn more about the product. Download: artistx_1.1_live_dvd_iso_07_06_2011.iso (3,664MB, MD5).

Linux Deepin is a popular and active Chinese community distribution based on Ubuntu and featuring the GNOME desktop and numerous usability improvements. With remarkable contributions from enthusiastic volunteers, Linux Deepin 11.06 has been released. It is based on Ubuntu 11.04 but still uses GNOME 2, and it features an independently developed Deepin Software Centre. The look and feel of this new version like default font size have been adjusted in response to the requests from the user community, and input methods for both Simplified and Traditional Chinese (Yong and ibus-chewing) are included with a pretty skin. LibreOffice is installed by default but a specialized office suite dedicated for Deepin from Evermore Software is available via Software Centre. Video and audio players are still GNOME MPlayer and DeaDBeeF, both with enhancements. Firefox 5 is the web browser but the email client is changed to Thunderbird to better work with GMail. Check the full release notes (in Chinese) with a few screenshots. Download (MD5): deepin_11.06_i386.iso (655MB), deepin_11.06_amd64.iso (635MB).

Artyom Zorin has announced the release of Zorin OS 5 "Business" edition, an Ubuntu-based commercial distribution designed for small and medium-size businesses: "The Zorin OS team is proud to release Zorin OS 5 Business. Zorin OS 5 Business is a desktop operating system which provides all the tools needed to start and maintain a small/medium sized business out of the box. In here you will find a wealth of software, including accounting, bookkeeping, stock analysis, database, retail, word processing, spreadsheet and much more. Zorin OS 5 Business also includes our innovative Zorin Look Changer Premium, Zorin Internet Browser Manager, Zorin Background Plus and other programs from our earlier versions. Zorin OS 5 Business is available for a small donation of €7 for a download and €10 for a DVD." Here is the brief release announcement. The product is available for purchase from the project's premium page.

Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 6.3, a utility live CD with software for disk management and data rescue tasks. Besides the usual i486 image, Parted Magic now also exists in i686 and x86_64 flavours for more modern computers. From the release announcement: "This release fixes a few obscure typos and bugs in some of our scripts. Pburn and Pfilesearch have been added for testing. There are no menu entries yet, so run 'pburn' from the command line. The main reason for this release was to add more kernel CPU options. Parted Magic now comes in i486, i686, and x86_64 editions. The only testing I've done with x86_64 was on my i7 machine. I've successfully chrooted into a 64-bit Slackware 13.37 and ran some command-line programs. The i686 CPU is set to PIII, so if you are running a PII, use the i486 version instead." Download (MD5): pmagic-6.3.iso (170MB).

Mahdi Fattahi has announced the release of AriOS 3.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution with a unique look & feel and loads of extra software: "I'm very happy to announce the release of AriOS 3.0 final, a complete operating system based on Ubuntu 11.04. In this version the focus has been on more polish and providing a better set of default programs. Noteworthy points and changes in this version: Unity has been removed as I think it still lacks a lot of features and customization options; downgraded Compiz to 0.8.6 to avoid the problems reported with the new version shipped in Ubuntu 11.04; Sessions - you can choose between three sessions at login: AriOS, AriOS-2D and GNOME Classic; Alt+F2 shortcut has been assigned to Synapse, the smart, semantic launcher." Read the release announcement for a full list of changes and known issues. Download: AriOS-3.0-INTL.iso (1,419MB, MD5).

Following the recent release of Toorox "GNOME" edition, JÃ¶rn Lindau today announced the availability of a new "KDE" variant, a Gentoo-based live DVD built on top of the Linux kernel 2.6.39 and featuring the KDE desktop (version 4.6.4). From the release announcement: "A new version of the 'KDE' edition has been finished. This contains all improvements of the recent 'GNOME' edition. The kernel is Linux 2.6.39-gentoo-r1. KDE has been updated to the recent version 4.6.4. Also the latest version of IceCat 5.0 has been built in. Nearly all packages have been updated - GCC 4.5.2, X.Org Server 1.10.2, VLC 1.1.10, LibreOffice 3.4.0, Audacious 2.5.3. Both torrent files (32-bit and 64-bit) are stored in the download section." Download (MD5) the live DVD images via BitTorrent: Toorox_07.2011-32bit_KDE.iso (1,794MB), Toorox_07.2011-64bit_KDE.iso (1,985MB).

Valent Turkovic has announced the release of Fusion Linux 14.1, "a Fedora remix done right": "Fusion Linux 14.1 'Thorium' is officially out. This release has been in the making for a few months, and it is mostly an update to our initial release. The biggest new feature is LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice.org and two biggest bugs squashed. One bug prevented Firefox 4.0 from starting while using it as live USB or live DVD and other bug was a dependency issue that prevented updates from being downloaded. We hoped with this release to make all desktop components more stable and add an overall desktop polish. Features and highlights: new download managers - Tucan and Uget; new remote desktop application - Remmina; a brand-new custom-made theme; multimedia support out of the box...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and screenshots. Download (MD5): Fusion-Linux-14.1.iso (1,709MB).

Troy Dawson has announced the availability of the first beta release of Scientific Linux 6.1, a Red Hat-based distribution with extra software likely to be of use in academic and scientific environments: "The first beta of Scientific Linux 6.1 has been released. All of the recompiled packages have passed our tests to our satisfaction. We do not expect the packages that we get from the upstream vendor to change. Although we see a few tweaks and changes before release candidate, these should all be minor. I believe we have made it past the last major hurdles. Changes since alpha 2: libguestfs - recompiled against a different repository so that it better matched our golden image; qemu-kvm - recompiled against several different repositories, our version does not require several libX libraries...." See the release announcement for full details. Download: SL-61-i386-2011-07-01-Install-DVD.iso (3,607MB, SHA256), SL-61-x86_64-2011-07-01-Install-DVD.iso (4,184MB, SHA256). On a related note, live images containing Scientific Linux 5.6 are now ready for testing.

José Antonio Calvo has announced the availability of a new beta release of Zentyal 2.2, a server distribution for small and medium-sized businesses based on Ubuntu: "We're glad to announce the availability of a new beta installer, Zentyal 2.1-2. Please note that this is the last beta version: from July to September we'll publish a series of release candidate versions and in September the next stable release (Zentyal 2.2), will see daylight. This installer contains all the improvements and bug fixes done since the release of the previous beta installer (2.1-1), but it also comes with the first previews of three fully new modules: PPTP, Captive Portal and VM Management. Please note that these modules are still under development and they may be in alpha status." Here is the release announcement with an important note about the distribution's VM Management module. Download: zentyal-2.1-2-i386.iso (579MB, MD5), zentyal-2.1-2-amd64.iso (541MB, MD5).

Eric Turgeon has announced the availability of GhostBSD 1.5, a FreeBSD-based live CD with GNOME and a work-in-progress graphical system installer: "GhostBSD 1.5 is out. We have updated to Gnome 2.30. Now you can install GhostBSD by terminal commands and a list with pc-sysinstall. The partitions supported to install GhostBSD are UFS, UFS+S (plus soft updates7), UFS+J (plus journaling8), ZFS, and SWAP. A 'how to install' is on the desktop. With GhostBSD in your hard drive you have Linux-f10 compatibility that means you can install Linux apps and Linux flash. Cups ready to use. Compiz installed and ready to use. This is the first installable version. Not so user friendly. But I have promised something. The last month all was going wrong and I decide to go with pc-sysinstall. Now for the next 6 months I will work on a graphic installer for 2.0. GhostBSD amd64 is coming the next week." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (MD5) this first installable version of GhostBSD: GhostBSD-1.5-x86.iso (1,547MB).

Alan Baghumian has announced the release candidate of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.6, a desktop-oriented distribution based on Debian's testing branch: "The release candidate version of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.6 aka Vinnie is available now. Parsix package repositories are synchronized with Debian testing repositories as of July 1, 2010 and for the first time we are offering our own multimedia repository called Wonderland which is a snapshot of Debian Multimedia repository. Vinnie ISO images are compiled using SquashFS 4.0 with LZMA compression; will fit on a blank DVD. The updated Linux 2.6.32.16 kernel with improved configuration is patched using the latest TuxOnIce suspension/hibernation and Kon Kolivas's BFS patches. Improved live boot system loads the system faster and this version also ships our experimental USB installer that enables users to run Parsix from USB keys and pen drives." See the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download: parsix_3.6r0-rc-i386.iso (888MB, MD5), parsix_3.6r0-rc-amd64.iso (895MB, MD5).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 9 "KDE" edition: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 9 KDE. Linux Mint 9 KDE is available in 32-bit and 64-bit as a liveDVD, via Torrent and HTTP download. Based on Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, Linux 2.6.32, KDE 4.4.4, X.Org 7.5 and Amarok 2.3.0, this edition features a lot of improvements and the latest software from the Open Source World. Featured improvements in this release: KDE Network Manager, new applications, 30,000 applications catalogued and reviewable both online and in the new software manager, brand new incremental backup tool for both data and software selection, USB and Windows installers, 3 years support, look and feel improvements." See the release announcement, release notes and what's new pages for further details. Download: linuxmint-9-kde-dvd-i386.iso (1,290MB, MD5, torrent), linuxmint-9-kde-dvd-amd64.iso (1,382MB, MD5, torrent).

Petter Reinholdtsen has announced a test release for Skolelinux 6.0, a Debian-based distribution for schools also known as Debian-Edu: "This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this release is to test the user application selection. To have a look, install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set of installed packages (i.e., applications) should be modified. If some user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know. Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your language of choice, please let us know too. In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus, artwork, starters, etc.) are appreciated. We would like to ship a nice and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box." Read the full release announcement for additional details. Download the multi-architecture (i386 and amd64) installation DVD image from here: debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso (4,475MB, MD5).

Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 1.2.5-35, a new stable version of the specialist live CD designed for hard disk partitioning and cloning: "This release of Clonezilla Live includes major enhancements, changes and bug fixes. The underlying GNU/Linux operating system was upgraded. This release is based on the Debian sid repository (as of 2010/Jul/20). The Linux kernel was updated to 2.6.32-17. This release was created by live-helper 2.0~a19-1.1drbl, and live-initramfs 1.236.2-1drbl-3 is used. Partclone was updated to 0.2.11. Default to use VGA 800x600 for Clonezilla Live. Most of the netbooks do not support 1024x768; 800x600 is the common one for most of the computers, and it's good enough for Clonezilla Live. Program prep-ocsroot was improved to work with sshfs/cifs path with space. Program ocs-iso is able to create the recovery ISO larger than 4.5 GB." The release announcement. Download (MD5): clonezilla-live-1.2.5-35-i686.iso (118MB), clonezilla-live-1.2.5-35-amd64.iso (130MB).

Frugalware Linux 1.3 RC1 was unleashed after two pre-releases and exactly on schedule: "The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.3rc1, the first candidate of the upcoming 1.3 stable release. Here are some of the major improvements and changes since 1.3pre2. Improvements: X.Org now uses udev to detect your hardware automatically, /etc/X11/xorg.conf is no longer generated by default; Started integrating the Haven artwork. Package updates: Linux 2.6.34.1; GNOME 2.30.2; KDE SC 4.4.5; Mozilla Firefox 3.6.6; Updated libraries openssl-1.0.0, libburn-0.8, exiv2-0.20, and ffmpeg-0.6; 429 package updates; 46 new packages. Please refer to the Frugalware Haven ChangeLog for more information." See the release announcement and the installation instruction. Download: frugalware-1.3rc1-i686-dvd1.iso (4,249MB, SHA1, torrent).

eBox Platform 1.5, an Ubuntu-based, easy-to-use platform to manage various network services, has been released: "eBox Platform development team is glad to announce that the first installer CD for eBox Platform 1.5 is now available for download. Please note that eBox Platform 1.5 is a development version based on Ubuntu 10.04 and it will become eBox Platform 2.0 (next stable release of the Linux small business server) after a stabilization period. The development of eBox Platform 2.0 is now finished and from now on all the attention will be focused on testing, bugfixing and optimizing the software. These are the most relevant changes since eBox Platform 1.4 release: Improved software management; Autoconfiguration wizards integrated in the administration interface; New mode for network interfaces; Improved logs performance; Webserver with HTTPS support; New FTP module." See the release announcement for more information. Download: ebox_installer-1.5-i386.iso (631MB, MD5).

FreeBSD 8.1 was formally announced after a few days of its appearance on world-wide mirrors: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: zfsloader added; zpool version of ZFS subsystem updated to version 14; NFSv4 ACL support in UFS and ZFS; support added to cp(1), find(1), getfacl(1), mv(1), and setfacl(1) utilities; UltraSPARC IV/IV+, SPARC64 V support; SMP support in PowerPC G5; BIND 9.6.2-P2; sendmail updated to 8.14.4; OpenSSH updated to 5.4p1; GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.5. For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list." Read the full release announcement for further details. Download: FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (645MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso (682MB, SHA256). The released ISOs images are also available via BitTorrent.

Linux Deepin is a Chinese community distribution based on Ubuntu and designed for desktop users. After three release candidates, Linux Deepin 10.06 was announced today. It is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and a fresh installation (instead of upgrade from version 9.12) is recommended for users. It supports installation from USB devices and thus one does not need to burn the released ISO image onto a CD. Major components include ibus-sunpinyin the whole-sentence-oriented Chinese input method, Linux kernel 2.6.32-23, Flash player 10.1.53.64, Xfce 4.6.2, OpenOffice.org 3.2.0, Firefox 3.6.6 and its plugins all of the latest versions. User-friendly improvements include automatic installation (one only needs to perform disk partition and user creation), faster boot-up, and graphical configurations for various network settings. Please check the release announcement (in Chinese) with a number of screenshots. Download from mirrors: Deepin-10.06.iso (667MB, MD5).

PelicanHPC, a Debian-based live CD for high performance computing clusters and formerly known as ParallelKNOPPIX, has released a new test build: "Version 2.2 release candidate is available (only for amd64). This release has many new features, thanks to Robert G. Petry. It is now possible to configure the frontend to boot without intervention, and to send wake-on-LAN packets to the nodes. There is a big list of new features, so test reports are welcome. New in this version: ~/pelican_config file to allow for persistence, customization and headless boot; autodetection of persistent frontend home; autodetection of frontend and node local scratch space; ability to run local scripts post boot and setup; node beep after boot; firewall; automated node booting using wake-on-lan; static IP assignment configurable using MAC addresses; node startup/shutdown script." Visit the project's home page to read the brief release announcement. Update: A bug fix version was soon released as RC2: pelicanhpc-v2.2-rc2-amd64.iso (697MB, MD5).

PC-BSD 8.1 has been released: "The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.1 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE and KDE 4.4.5. Version 8.1 contains a number of enhancements and improvements. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Some of the notable changes are: FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE; KDE 4.4.5; numerous fixes to the installation backend; support for creating dedicated disk GPT partitioning; improved ZFS support; bug fixes to desktop tools/utilities. Recommended system requirements: Pentium 4 or higher; 512 MB of RAM; 20 GB of free hard drive space (either partition, or entire disk)...." See the release announcement, changelog and release notes for more details. Download: PCBSD8.1-x86-DVD.iso (3,396MB, MD5), PCBSD8.1-x64-DVD.iso (3,604MB, MD5).

After its "One" flavor products release in May and in June, the Peppermint Team is proud to release its second offering, the "Ice" flavor: "This is not an upgrade to replace Peppermint OS One, but another project that we will be under constant development from here forward. Peppermint Ice was developed around Chromium as its default browser and a brand new SSB [Site Specific Browser] Application was developed by Kendall Weaver named 'Ice' which this new Peppermint variant is named after. The default Cloud Applications are simply included in Peppermint Ice as an example of the flexibility of the Peppermint Ice SSB as opposed to locally installed applications. These defaults can easily be removed and added again later as the user sees fit." Check the release announcement. Download (MD5): Peppermint-Ice-07142010.iso (416MB).

The Tiny Core project, representing only the core needed to boot into a very minimal X desktop typically with wired internet access, has unleashed a major release: "Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce Tiny Core 3.0 is now available. Changelog: New kernel update to 2.6.33.3 (a upx'ed version is also available in the distribution file area ); New 64-bit kernel available in distribution files area; New compressed swap in ram, able to run more and longer, less crashes due to out of ram; New tmpfs root always, no longer possible to exhaust ram in an 'embed' boot via files; New improved virtualization support; New ext4 support in base/base tools; New delta extension updates as the default using zsync; New kernel for support of pci-hotplug modules; New modules for eeepc-laptop and ssb; New kernel-agnostic dep files supported by core functions...." See the complete changelog for more information. Download: tinycore_3.0.iso (10.7MB, MD5).

The Gentoo-based Sabayon Linux project has announced the availability of two new spins with alternative desktop environments - LXDE and Xfce: "Our crew is happy to announce the immediate availability of Xfce, LXDE and SpinBase/OpenVZ Sabayon 5.3 spins built on top of Sabayon SpinBase ISO images. Under the 'extra spins' umbrella, the Sabayon developers are going to experiment with new stable releases with different package compositions. Consider these extra spins an appetizer of what you will get in the upcoming months: more spins are planned and more external contributions will be accepted. Just like the other regular Sabayon releases, these extra spins are also built daily by our build servers and available in our mirrors inside the 'iso/daily' directory." Read the rest of the release announcement which includes a list of features. Download (torrents): Sabayon_5.3_x86_LXDE.iso (615MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_5.3_x86_XFCE.iso (629MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_5.3_amd64_LXDE.iso (650MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_5.3_amd64_XFCE.iso (663MB, MD5, torrent).

Linux Mint 9 "LXDE" edition, featuring the lightweight LXDE desktop and designed for older computers with limited resources, has been released: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 9 LXDE. Based on Lubuntu 10.04, Linux kernel 2.6.32, Openbox 3.4.10, LXSession 0.4.3, and X.Org Server 1.7.5, Linux Mint 9 LXDE features a complete desktop computing experience while being easy on system resource usage thus making it suitable for older hardware and situations where speed is a crucial factor. Featured improvements in this release: LXDM, improved PCManFM2 file manager, VLC installed by default, 30,000 applications catalogued and reviewable both online and in the new software manager, brand new incremental backup tool for both data and software selection, three years support." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download (MD5): linuxmint-9-lxde-cd-i386.iso (595MB, torrent).

Darin VanCoevering has announced the release of SuperGamer Supreme 2, a dual-layer DVD packed with games and other day-to-day software applications: "SuperGamer is a games-oriented Linux desktop operating system. It has all the normal Linux desktop applications such as the Firefox browser and OpenOffice.org, but also has a great many native Linux games added, as well as some demo editions of proprietary games. This SuperGamer Supreme 2 version will work on both 32-bit and 64-bit PCs and fills a full live dual-layer DVD. It includes support for Ethernet, wireless, and dial-up Internet connections. It can run in live mode directly from the DVD and can be optionally installed to a hard drive. I also included the latest NVIDIA and ATI drivers. A few key components are Linux kernel 2.6.27.47, Azureus, Audacity, GParted, Limewire, GIMP, K9copy...." Read the rest of the release announcement which contains a full list of games included on the DVD. Download via BitTorrent: SuperGamer.iso (8,024MB).

Following the recent release of openSUSE 11.3, the project's education team has now released its "Edu Li-f-e" edition, a specialist distribution for schools and other educational environments: "The openSUSE Education team is thrilled to announce the availability of openSUSE Edu: Linux for Education (Li-f-e). The aim of this DVD is to provide complete education and development resources for parents, students, teachers as well as IT admins running labs at educational institutes. It comes bundled with a wealth of software carefully selected to meet every need. Educational software covering a wide range of subjects such as IT, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy and electronics catering to students right from pre-school to research. If you are a developer or a student wanting to learn programming on Linux platform, there is everything you can hope for in one place: Java, C, C++, Perl, Python, LAMP stack, databases, IDEs, the list goes on." Here is the full release announcement with screenshots. Download: openSUSE-Edu-li-f-e-11.3-1-i686.iso (2,621MB, MD5, torrent).

Jason Melton has announced the release of Netrunner 2, a beginner-friendly, Ubuntu-based desktop distribution and live DVD with a carefully tuned KDE 4 desktop and integrated GNOME applications: "Today we released the official Netrunner 2 'Blacklight' CD image. Features: switched from GNOME to KDE; aims to be Ubuntu, GNOME and GTK+ compatible; includes GNOME applications like Nautilus and Synaptic; includes Firefox 3.6.3, installed web browser plugins (Java, Flash), VLC 1.1 (media player with codecs), OpenOffice.org software suite 3.2, Thunderbird (email client), WINE 1.42, GIMP (paint program), Audacious (Winamp-like music player), Pidgin, Vuze (file-sharing program). All on top of a fine-tuned and easily customizable KDE 4.4 desktop environment." See the brief release announcement and visit the project's features page to learn more about this version of Netrunner. Download (MD5): netrunner-2.iso (1,114MB, torrent).

Rene Rebe has announced the release of T2 SDE 8.0, a distribution build kit designed for advanced Linux users who wish to build custom distributions: "After years of development we are proud to announce the availability of the new T2 stable release, version 8.0. This release received updates across the board, while a major working target was to further improve cross compilation, and all official ISO images are now fully cross-built. Over 10,000 Subversion revisions indicate the magnitude of the release, with over 200 new packages, new features and various other improvements and fixes. User visible changes: GCC 4.5.0, glibc 2.11.2, X.Org 7.5, preliminary support for LLVM/clang and MinGW/Win32." Visit the project's home page to read the release announcement. The new version is available for download as a source tarball; alternatively, a set of pre-compiled CD images for i486, powerpc, powerpc64 and x86_64 is also provided: t2-8.0-minimal-i486.iso (200MB, MD5), t2-8.0-minimal-x86_64.iso (242MB, MD5).

Zencafe GNU/Linux is a Slackware and Zenwalk-based distribution designed specifically for deployment in Internet cafés. The project's latest release, version 2.2, was announced earlier today: "This Zencafe version uses the latest Zenwalk Linux distribution and kernel 2.6.33.4. Mainly designed for use in Internet cafés, Zencafe is polished and easy enough to be operated even by a non-technical user. With the included auto-recovery and Internet café management software, Zencafe is the first Linux solution that is suitable for use in Internet cafés. Software included: Linux kernel 2.6.33.4, OpenOffice.org 3.2.1, Mozilla Firefox, Pidgin and Gyachi (instant messengers), Mkahawa Internet café management software, auto-recovery and kiosk mode protection. What's new? Simple installation process, user-friendly keyboard shortcuts, additional applications...." Here is the full release announcement. Download: zencafe-2.2.iso (595MB, MD5).

The just-released Parted Magic 5.0, a live utility distribution designed for hard disk partitioning and data rescue tasks, comes with an upgraded kernel and GParted, as well as improved internationalisation support: "Parted Magic 5.0 brings Linux kernel 2.6.34.1, significant international language support (German, French, Italian, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian), X.Org Server 1.7.7, and GParted 0.6.1. All other program updates can be found on the change log page. I would like to give a big thanks to Dick Burggraaff for all of his contributions over the past couple of months. He has made many updates to the init scripts as well as the much improved Parted Magic keyboard program located on the desktop. Overall, many bugs have been fixed and this release is far better than anything in the 4.x releases for a large number of people." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement. Download (MD5): pmagic-5.0.iso.zip (99.2MB), pmagic-usb-5.0.zip (99.2MB).

After a series of alpha builds, the first release candidate for the upcoming Tiny Core Linux 3.0 is now available for testing: "Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce that Tiny Core 3.0 RC1 is now available. Changelog: new kernel update to 2.6.33.3 (a UPXed version is also available in the distribution file area); new 64-bit kernel available in distribution files area; new compressed swap in RAM able to run more and longer; new tmpfs root always - no longer possible to exhaust RAM in an 'embed' boot via files; new improved virtualization support; new ext4 support in base/base tools; new delta extension updates as the default using zsync; new modules for Eee PC laptop and SSB; updated BusyBox to 1.17.0, glibc to 2.11.1 and recompiled against 2.6.33 kernel headers, GCC to 4.4.3, e2fsprogs to 1.41.11, zlib to 1.2.5; updated X libraries in base to X.Org 7.5...." See the full changelog for more details. Download: tinycore_3.0rc1.iso (10.7MB, MD5).

Matthew Dawkins has announced the release of Unity Linux 2010, Mandriva-based distribution designed for building custom solutions from a minimalist base: "The Unity Linux project is pleased to announce the final 2010 release. Changelog: the usage of Plymouth for the boot graphics; new Linux kernel version 2.6.33.5; new Unity theme; added smart-applet for automatic package updates; updates of all major desktop environments as well as supporting libraries. The repositories now contain many fully-fledged, up-to-date desktop environments which can be installed with the use of the 'task' meta-packages. Recent additions include: KDE 4.4.3, GNOME 2.30.0, Openbox 3.4.11.2, Xfce 4.6.2, Enlightenment 0.16.999.49898." Read the rest of the release announcement to learn more about the project's first stable release and to view a few screenshots. Download: Unity32-2010.1.iso (277MB, MD5), Unity64-2010.1.iso (276MB, MD5).

To celebrate Argentina's day of independence, the developers of Tuquito have released the latest version of their Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution and live DVD. This release comes with large number of improvements that should please both the beginning and advanced Linux users. These include: updated Linux kernel 2.6.32 and GNOME desktop 2.30.2; faster boot; improved audio and video drivers included in the base system; support for online updates; improvements in system stability; redesigned main menu; support for English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese; addition of WINE and other new software applications; new welcome screen, wallpapers and themes; improved Nautilus file manager with support for Breadcrumbs; Firefox 3.6.6 optimised for small screens; new program manager... Read the full release announcement (in Spanish) for additional information. Download: tuquito-4-main-i386.iso (906MB).

Stefan Wold has announced the availability of the first release candidate for Lunar Linux 1.6.5, a source-based distribution designed for more advanced Linux users: "The Lunar team proudly announces the release of Lunar Linux 1.6.5-rc1 codename 'Mare Ingenii'. This project is still alive and we don't intend to change that. While news and updates on our main site may have been next to nil we assure you that the wheels have been turning behind the scenes. The Lunar team has been busy keeping the modules up to date. New features in 1.6.5: based on Linux kernel 2.6.34.1 and glibc 2.11.2; added support for ext4 file system; added option to change preferred /etc/fstab style; UUID, LABEL or device name; OpenSSH and Screen are now part of the live CD to allow remote assistance during install." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download: lunar-1.6.5-rc1-i686.iso.bz2 (348MB, SHA1), lunar-1.6.5-rc1-x86_64.iso.bz2 (361MB, SHA1).

Robert Gabriel has announced the availability of the first release candidate for Kongoni GNU/Linux 1.12.3, a Slackware-based distribution for the desktop: "Finally I can release RC1 of Kongoni GNU/Linux 1.12.3. Since alpha 2 a lot of things have changed, a lot of things got added and the same removed. First of all, the kernel was upgraded to version 2.6.34.1, of course patched with Aufs and LZMA support for Squashfs 4. Removed Firefox and built and added Icecat 3.6.4, PIG was re-added, but also rebuilt and it comes with new icon theme, fully moved the git repository to gitorious.org and the build packages moved to SourceForge. Removed gtk-qt-engine and replaced it with kcm-gtk (gtk-qt-engine has some weird issues with Icecat/Firefox), added QtCurve package, flash-nonfree package (not installed by default), radeon-firmware (not installed by default), upgraded GParted to version 0.5.2...." Continue reading the release announcement for a full list of changes and a few screenshots of the desktop. Download: kongoni-1.12.3-rc1-i486.iso (668MB, MD5).

Eric Turgeon has announced the availability of a beta release of GhostBSD 1.5, a FreeBSD-based live CD with GNOME and a work-in-progress graphical system installer: "GhostBSD 1.5 beta is here. In this beta we have the back-end of the PC-BSD installer, but it is not configured to install GhostBSD. We have added CUPS and Compiz but we have not tested whether CUPS works. Compiz is part of the system but with an X.Org configuration that won't work with Compiz. But once the installer is completed, GhostBSD should be ready to use Compiz. I have tried to make the live CD mount devices but I have had some difficulties to make it work. Please, if you find a bug or have an idea or a solution to these problems, email me. The x86_64 edition will be released next week." Here is the brief release announcement. Those brave enough wishing to test this early beta release of GhostBSD 1.5 can download it from here: GhostBSD-1.5-beta.iso (680MB, MD5).

The first release candidate for ClearOS 5.2, a network and gateway server designed for small organizations and distributed environments, is out and ready for testing: "The first release candidate for ClearOS Enterprise 5.2 is now available. All the major features have been implemented and upgrades from ClarkConnect 4.x and later are now supported. The major changes since beta 2 include: fixed time zone handling; fixed intrusion detection configuration handling; fixed roaming profile permissions; updated the protocol filter / l7-filter. There are still a dozen of bugs that need to be squashed before the final release. We also need to finish some experimental features that will be released in ClearOS 6.x. The final release is just around the corner." Read the release announcement and release notes for a full list of new features and other details. Download: clearos-enterprise-5.2-rc1.iso (695MB, MD5).

Mandriva Linux 2010.1 has been released: "Mandriva, the leading European publisher of Linux solutions, announces today the launch of the final version of Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring. Quicker, easier and more secure than ever, Mandriva Linux offers new functionalities which revolutionise the desktop. In a nutshell, Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring offers: complete, quick-to-install system, comprising all the necessary drivers; 'Smart Desktop', a unique technology, which offers dynamic access to all files by labelling them and grading photos, documents, emails and videos; Mandriva Directory Server (MDS), an easy-to-use LDAP directory management solution; tools to easily secure the system, parental control is easier than ever...." Read the rest of the press release for further details. Download the installable "One" live CDs or the "Free" installation DVDs from here: mandriva-one-2010-spring-KDE4-i586.iso (691MB, MD5, torrent), mandriva-one-2010-spring-GNOME-i586.iso (694MB, MD5, torrent), mandriva-free-2010-spring-i586.iso (4,447MB, MD5, torrent), mandriva-free-2010-spring-x86_64.iso (4,459MB, MD5, torrent).

George Vlahavas has announced the release of Salix OS 13.1 "LXDE" edition, a lightweight, Slackware-based desktop Linux distribution: "Salix OS 13.1 LXDE edition has been released. Based on Slackware Linux 13.1, it features the lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, with a clean look and feel. The main applications that complete the LXDE experience are the lightweight and fast PCManFM file manager and the popular Openbox window manager. As with the standard Xfce edition, this CD image allows installation to be performed in three different modes - core, basic and full. The core mode is identical to the one you get from the Xfce edition. Basic will only install a minimal LXDE desktop with only Midori and gslapt installed as extra and full will install everything that is included on the CD image. That includes the lightweight Midori web browser, the Claws-mail e-mail client, the Transmission BitTorrent client and the Pidgin instant messaging client." Here is the full release announcement. Download (MD5) from here: salix-lxde-13.1.iso (464MB).

The Council of Economy, Innovation and Science of the Spanish regional government of AndalucÃ­a has published the final release of Guadalinex 7, an Ubuntu-based distribution on a DVD designed for deployment in government offices and schools around the region. Thirty percent faster than its predecessor, this new version improves the Internet user experience by providing easy access to social networking sites as well as to publication of blogs. Apart from the usual programs for Internet browsing, email and chat, the distribution comes with a parental control tool called "Nanny", developed in-house, which will help fathers and mothers in protecting their children from accessing malicious and inappropriate web sites. Moreover, the graphical aspect of Guadalinex has been given special attention, with an animated desktop bar (Cairo-Dock) containing frequently used applications and other interesting features. See the release announcement (in Spanish) for full details. The live DVD image is available for download (MD5) from here: guadalinex-v7-desktop-i386-final.iso (3,901MB).

Linux Deepin is a Chinese community distribution based on Ubuntu, and version 10.06 will be the next release after 9.12. Compared with the previous beta release, this release candidate fixes the bugs found in Thunar and GDM, and replaces ibus-pinyin with ibus-sunpinyin, currently considered by many as the best Chinese input method for composing complete sentences. Major upgrades include Linux kernel 2.6.32-23, Firefox 3.6.6, and Flash plugin 10.1. Components like BitTorrent software and other Firefox plugins have been upgraded to the latest versions. A known issue lies in the protocol handling error when one double-clicks the computer icon on the desktop. Please follow the release announcement (in Chinese) to report other problems. Download: Deepin-10.06-RC.iso (669MB, MD5).

Ainul Hakim has announced the release of BlankOn 6.0, an Indonesian desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu with support for Indonesian languages and scripts, as well as English: "BlankOn 6.0 'Ombilin' is the newest version of the BlankOn distribution. It was developed by the Indonesian Linux Mover Foundation and BlankOn developer team. BlankOn is an Indonesian distribution that includes a variety of software that is widely used by consumers in general, such as office programs, financial applications, Internet applications, drawing (both vector and bitmap) and support for various multimedia file formats. Features: four types of scripts, namely Bugis, Toba Batak, Balinese and Sundanese; Stardict fast dictionary; Chromium web browser; Exaile music player; USB modem switch, Shotwell photo manager; support for the AMD64 architecture...." Read the release announcement and release notes (both links in Bahasa Indonesia) for further details. An English translation of the release notes is available here. Download: blankon-6.0-cdlive-i386.iso (698MB, MD5, torrent), blankon-6.0-cdlive-amd64.iso (698MB, MD5).

The latest version of Absolute Linux, a lightweight Slackware-based distribution with IceWM, comes with Google Chrome as the default web browser and a number of security fixes: "Absolute Linux 13.1.2 released. Google Chrome replaces Mozilla Firefox as default browser. Lower memory usage, faster rendering and proper URL parsing all contributed to this decision. Firefox package is still up to date and in CD2 directory of repos under /internet. Also several security-related updates as well as multimedia installer update (needed updated URL) Also updated rox-archiver to handle DEB files (to unpack, not install). Note that Google Chrome is a native Absolute build with blacklisting of Gecko Media Player plugin removed. This means that the plugin works. It was blacklisted by Google coders due to crashing complaints, but I have tested it extensively and have not experienced these issues, so I'm watching videos." Visit the project's news page to read the brief release announcement. Download (MD5): absolute-13.1.2.iso (691MB).

Estrella Roja 2.8, an Argentinian Linux distribution based on Debian's testing branch, but featuring the legacy KDE 3.5 desktop, has been released. According to the release announcement (in Spanish), the new version combines the relatively lightweight KDE 3.5 desktop environment with a new i686-optimised Linux kernel, version 2.6.34, with a PREEMPT patch and support for many WiFi chipsets, including Intel, Atheros, Broadcom and Realtek. Among the included packages WINE has been updated to version 1.1, Pidgin to version 2.7.1, MPlayer to the latest SVN build with support for Spanish and with skins, emesene to version 1.6.2 (with webcam support), XChat to version 2.8, and NVIDIA driver to version 173.14.25. Also included is wxDFast, a download accelerator program and rtmpdump 2.3, a console program that displays Flash streaming. The live CD image is available for Download (MD5) from here: estrellaroja2.8_i686.iso (700MB).

Kevin Thompson has announced the release of Element 1.3, a Xubuntu-based distribution for home theatre personal computers: "We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Element OS 1.3. This is the first version of Element OS to provide streaming content services out of the box through the inclusion of the Cooliris media browser. Cooliris brings to Element OS tens of thousands of web videos, TV shows, movies, and music videos from all the major networks, studios, and web channels. Categorized, searchable, and all presented in a unique 3D media wall. We also continue our gradual improvements to the 1.x series with new versions of the update manager, HDMI audio switch, and a new interface setup for Firefox. This version is based on Xubuntu 9.10; featured software includes Linux kernel 2.6.31, Xfce 4.6.1, XBMC 9.11, Firefox 3.5.9, Decibel audio player 1.01, Pidgin 2.6.5, Transmission 1.75, AllmyApps.com 9.10 integration, custom GTK+ themes, and version 1.0 of the Element application finder." Read the rest of the release announcement for a full changelog. Download: element-1.3.0-release.iso (625MB, MD5).

Jan Paul Tuecking has announced the release of IPFire 2.7, a specialist distribution of Linux for firewalls: "Today we are going to release IPFire 2.7. At first we will only release the ISO files, the update is not yet available via pakfire. The reason for this is the change of the IPSec software from OpenSwan to StrongSwan and the mandatory changes in the configuration of net2net connections. The update on pakfire will be released next friday, 2010-07-09, so there is enough time to change the IPSec tunnels. There are about 400 changes in the new IPFire version: updated Linux kernel to stable LTS (2.6.32.15); updated OpenSSL to version 0.9.8o; updated Net-SSLeay to version 1.36; switched IPSec from OpenSwan to StrongSwan version 4.4.0; fixed VPN-watch hang at connection re-start; updated Snort to stable 2.8.6; removed snort md5 check, added free space check; added support for alix2 LEDs; added Vodafone K3765 and K4505 usbids to option driver...." Visit the project's news page to read the detailed changelog. Download: ipfire-2.7.i586-full-core38.iso (64.4MB, torrent).

The second release candidate for FreeBSD 8.1 is out and ready for final testing: "The second and most likely final release candidate for the FreeBSD 8.1 release cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures. There was a recent regression fix related to Atheros AR9280 cards being detected incorrectly, making them unusable. If you were having problems with a wireless card that had worked before not working with the earlier test builds; hopefully this will fix the problem. Testing of this fix would be appreciated. At this time DVD images are not available. There was a fairly serious security issue with the PNG graphics package. We will generate DVD images when the rebuilt packages become available, that will be announced when the images are ready." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and upgrade instructions. Download: FreeBSD-8.1-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (644MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-8.1-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (680MB, SHA256).

Muayyad Al-Sadi has announced the availability of the first beta release of Ojuba 4, a Fedora-based distribution optimised for Arabic speakers: "We are pleased to announce the release of Ojuba Linux 4 beta. This is the first release to have 64-bit as well as 32-bit support which we also offer for legacy PCs. Each of these comes as a 700 MB live CD and a 4 GB installation DVD with packages from Fedora 13 and extra packages from RPM Fusion and ojuba.org. This release includes a pre-release version of Thawab, the Arabic Islamic library and many more applications and enhancements. For more information please check the Ojuba 4 release notes in Arabic." The brief release announcements (in Arabic and English) contain several screenshots. Download the installable live CDs or the installation DVDs from here: ojuba-4b1-live-i686.iso (688MB), ojuba-4b1-live-x86_64.iso (699MB), ojuba-4b1-i386-DVD.iso (3,966MB), ojuba-4b1-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,956MB).

Martin Pitt has announced the availability of the second alpha release of Ubuntu 10.10 - now with Linux kernel 2.6.35, support for the Btrfs file system and Unity as the default user interface of the project's netbook edition: "Welcome to Maverick Meerkat alpha 2, which will in time become Ubuntu 10.10. New features: updated packages; the GNOME base platform has been updated to the current 2.31 versions, this particularly includes the new dconf and gsettings API; Evolution was updated to the 2.30 version, which operates much faster compared to the version in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS; KDE was updated to the current 4.5 RC 1 release; Qt was updated to the current 4.7 beta release; the new Unity interface is now the default in Ubuntu Netbook Edition; Linux kernel 2.6.35 based on 2.6.35-rc3; new cloud-init features...." See the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download (SHA256): maverick-desktop-i386.iso (687MB, torrent), maverick-desktop-amd64.iso (694MB, torrent). Also released today were the second 10.10 alpha builds for Kubuntu (download, release notes), Xubuntu (download), Ubuntu Studio (download) and Mythbuntu (download).

Flavio Pereira de Oliveira has announced the availability of the first public release of Imagineos, a Slackware-based live CD that used to be known as GoblinX: "It is a great pleasure to announce the first release of Imagineos. Imagineos is born from GoblinX Linux following the same path started more than five years ago. This first version is based on Slackware 13.1 with more applications and features; however, it is a live CD created using linux-live scripts with few modifications. The Imagineos 20100628 X1 uses Xfce as the desktop environment. This is the first public release and even though it is based on Slackware stable it must be considered as a beta version. Some versions of major components of the system: Linux kernel 2.6.33 (with Zen kernel patch), Squashfs 20100119, Aufs 20100116, C compiler GCC 4.4.4, Binutils 2.20.51.0.8, GNU C Library glibc 2.11.1, X Window system updated (but not 'bleeding edge') packages from X.Org, Xfce 4.6.1." Here is the brief release announcement. Download the English or the Brazilian Portuguese editions from here: Imagineos_en-20100628-X1.iso (699MB, MD5), Imagineos_br-20100628-X1.iso (699MB, MD5).

The just-released new version of Astaro Security Gateway comes with an overhauled web-based administration tool and improved security features: "Today the next version of our flagship product is available; Astaro Security Gateway version 8.000 has been released. Highlights: updated WebAdmin - new colors, fonts, and visuals make WebAdmin more easily readable with crisper overall presentation; IPv6 - support has been added for the next iteration of IP addressing; new Linux kernel and base system - provides 64-bit support, massively increased hardware compatibility, and better performance; country blocking - deny communications to/from any combination of countries and/or regions; web application security - a new subscription has been added to our protection portfolio which protects your web servers from modern attacks, hackers, viruses and data theft...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a full list of new features and improvements. Download (MD5): asg-8.000-7.1.iso (350MB).

Anil Gulecha has announced the availability of the second release candidate for Nexenta Core Platform 3.0, an OpenSolaris-based server distribution: "On behalf of the Nexenta project, I'd like to announce the availability of the Nexenta Core Platform 3.0 RC2. The main changes over the RC1 release include dozens of ON fixes backported to OpenSolaris b134 and bug fixes. Features: based on OpenSolaris build 134+ with backports and fixes from later releases; ZFS deduplication support; Crossbow support; over 13,000 packages in the repository; based on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS repository; includes latest APT, GCC, Binutils, Coreutils, Perl, Python, Ruby, Qt and GTK+ libraries; SMF support added for server applications like Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Exim; 100% native Debian environment, easy to upgrade, easy to use; includes apt-clone which brings ZFS power to apt-get." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (MD5): nexenta-core-platform_3.0-b134-rc2_x86.iso.zip (539MB).

Vanessa Wall has announced the availability of the second alpha release of Mandriva Linux 2010: "Mandriva Linux 2010 Alpha 2 is now available on public mirrors. This alpha is available only through 'Free' editions, 32-bit and 64-bit DVDs. Despite our planning modification (if you haven't heard it already, Mandriva Linux 2010 will be released on November 3rd, 2009), we were able to provide this alpha 2 release sooner than expected. Among many things, the following components have been updated in alpha 2: KDE 4.3 RC 3; GNOME 2.27.5, including new client-side window GTK+ feature (help to prevent flickering); Linux kernel 2.6.31-rc4, X.Org Server 1.6.3 with latest driver for Intel graphic chipset (should improve performance and stability)." Read the release announcement and release notes to find out more about Mandriva's latest development release. Download: mandriva-linux-free-alpha2-cooker-i586.iso (3,104MB, MD5), mandriva-linux-free-alpha2-cooker-x86_64.iso (3,393MB, MD5).

Johnny Lee has announced the availability of a new development release of Macpup Opera, version 061, a Puppy-based distribution featuring the latest Enlightenment 17 desktop: "Macpup Opera 061 is based on Ttuuxxx's 4.2v2 'Deeper thought' (2.6.25.16), a 'no Bling' version of Puppy Linux 4.2 with all of the current updates. It has D-Bus 1.2.4 compiled and installed from source and the Enlightenment 17 desktop version 0.16.999.061 compiled and installed from source with the updated version of librsvg 2.26.0. Opera 061 includes lots of the e17 extra modules like Flame, Rain, Snow and Penguins, and lots of extra shelf modules like Net, Tclock, Moon. Some of the shelf modules like CPU and Weather are unstable and may crash. Also included is the Opera 9.64 browser. GIMP 2.4.6 Xvidcap and Avidemux are included as .pets." Visit the project's home page to read the rest of the release announcement. Download: Macpup_Opera61.iso (173MB, MD5).

Matthew Burgess has announced the availability of the second release candidate for Linux From Scratch (LFS) 6.5, a book providing instructions for building a minimalist Linux-based operating system from scratch: "The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS version 6.5 release candidate 2. This release includes numerous changes from LFS 6.4 (including updates to Linux kernel 2.6.30.2, GCC 4.4.1 and glibc-2.10.1) and security fixes. It also includes editorial work on the explanatory material throughout the book, improving both the clarity and accuracy of the text. It is our intention to release LFS 6.5 final within one week. Please direct any comments about this release to the LFS development team at lfs-dev at linuxfromscratch.org." Read the release announcement for further information. The book is available for online viewing or as a download in HTML, XML and PDF formats.

SLAMPP is a Zenwalk-based distribution and live DVD designed for use as an instant home server. After over three years of inactivity, the project released version 2.0 of the distribution yesterday: "Today I am glad to let you know that SLAMPP 2.0 is available for public download. There are a lot of enhancements in this new release, some of them are the following: Linux live kernel 2.6.28.7, provides pre-configured servers and related utilities to ease your work in setting up an instant home server; provides full web and Linux development environment: LAMPP and Ruby on Rails, IDEs, frameworks, compilers, interpreters, utilities; equips with fancy bootsplash and progress bar, nice desktop wallpaper, complete OpenOffice.org suite, multimedia, graphics, audio and video applications; maintains the Slax modularity; can be installed on hard disk or USB storage device; supports persistent partitions on USB devices...." Here is the full release announcement. Download (MD5): slampp-2.0-zw-dvd.iso (1,849MB).

Takaaki Tabuchi has announced the release of Momonga Linux 6, a Japanese general-purpose distribution loosely modelled on Fedora. Some of the new features in this release include: Linux kernel 2.6.29 with support for the ext4 file system, KVM virtualisation and improved hardware support; improved boot times due to init script optimisations and adoption of Fedora's Plymouth boot system; introduction of Bash 4.0; GCC 4.3 as the default compiler; RPM package manager version 4.7; adoption of Meguri as the default Japanese font; GNOME 2.26.3, KDE 4.3 RC2 with a compatibility layer for KDE 3 applications; 3D desktop effects with Compiz Fusion 0.8.2; new wide-screen wallpapers; miscellaneous improvements concerning Japanese character input.... Please read the release announcement and release notes (both links in Japanese) for further information. Download: Momonga-6-i686-DVD.iso (4,254MB, MD5), Momonga-6-x86_64-DVD.iso (4,265MB, MD5).

Kelly Schwartz (aka "wolfden") has announced the release of Sabayon Linux 4.2 "CoreCD" edition: "Sabayon Linux CoreCD is a new type of release for Sabayon. The CoreCD is designed with a minimalist feature set to provide a foundation for building a customized installation tailored to the user's specific needs. The CoreCD is a text-based release. There is no X Server, GNOME, or KDE provided. The Feature list is intentionally short: bootable image suitable for a CD or USB thumb drive; text-based installer; basic default networking; Entropy and Portage ready. The CoreCD release is targeted at advanced users who want to take full control of the features and packages installed on their systems." Read the release announcement and take the visual tour for further details. Download: Sabayon_Linux_CoreCD_4.2_x86.iso (373MB, MD5), Sabayon_Linux_CoreCD_4.2_amd64.iso (414MB, MD5).

Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced that the first beta release of Zenwalk Linux 6.2, a Slackware-based desktop distribution, is now ready for testing: "Zenwalk Linux 6.2 beta has been released. Zenwalk Linux 6.2 is an up-to-date and improved version of Zenwalk 6.0, as we think that this series has reached the maturity level in terms of features. Here is a summary of the important changes: Linux kernel 2.6.30.2; ext4 as the main file system; the new Xfce 4.6.1; OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 (fast, optimized version); GRUB 2 bootloader with automatic configuration (will detect all your partitions and other operating systems); new Netpkg featuring a refined interface, rollback support and instant install with dependency control; faster boot (tuned init scripts); bus auto-detection in the installer (will choose appropriate kernel depending on the architecture, SATA, PATA, SCSI)." Read the full release announcement for more information. Download: zenwalk-6.2BETA.iso (483MB, MD5).

Warren Woodford has announced the release of antiX 8.2, a lightweight variant of SimplyMEPIS designed for older computers: "The antiX team is proud to announce that an updated antiX MEPIS 8.2 final is available at MEPIS mirrors. This release defaults to a fully customised IceWM desktop (Fluxbox is also installed) using a SimplyMEPIS 2.6.27 kernel and tweaked MEPIS Assistants for better compatibility in antiX. Ten languages are fully supported out of the box, with the language chosen at live CD boot carrying over to install. Boot time should be faster, particularly if the 'Faster' option is chosen at live CD boot menu and RAM usage low. antiX-Control Centre has been further improved, new scripts for screenshots, phonebook, mouse configuration have been added." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and system requirements. Download: antiX-M8.2.iso (466MB, MD5).

Steven Shiau has announced the availability of a new stable release of Clonezilla Live, a Debian-based live CD containing an easy-to-use partition and disk-cloning software called Clonezilla: "Clonezilla Live 1.2.2-26 (stable) has been released. This release adds a newer kernel 2.6.30 from backports at undebian.org, a new upstream syslinux 3.82, a newer Partclone 0.1.1, and genisoimage instead of mkisofs. A workaround to avoid using Partclone to save FAT file systems has been added. The smartmontools package has been added. The makeboot.sh script has been improved to allow USB devices /dev/ub[a-z]. A '--rescue' option has been added in ocs-onthefly for Partclone. Some bugs were fixed." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: clonezilla-live-1.2.2-26.iso (103MB, MD5).

Darin VanCoevering has announced the availability of SuperGamer Supreme, a VectorLinux-based distribution and live DVD with a large selection of games: "The world's first dual-layer live DVD. SuperGamer is a games-oriented Linux desktop operating system. It has all the normal Linux desktop applications, such as the Firefox browser, OpenOffice.org, etc., but also has a great many native-to-Linux games added, as well as some demos of proprietary games. This SuperGamer version will work on both 32-bit and 64-bit PCs and fills a full dual-layer DVD. It includes support for Ethernet, wireless and dial-up Internet connections. It can run in 'live' mode directly from the DVD and can be optionally installed to hard drive. A few key includes are 2.6.27.24 kernel, Azureus, GParted, Limewire, GIMP, K9copy, KOffice, OpenOffice.org 3, Hardinfo (system profiler and benchmark tool) along with all the plugins for Firefox. Games: Quake Wars, Doom 3, Prey, Unreal Tournament, Quake 4...." Here is the full release announcement. Download via BitTorrent: SuperGamer.iso (7,950MB).

Connie Sieh and Troy Dawson have announced the release of Scientific Linux 4.8, a distribution compiled from source packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8, but enhanced with scientific software, a cluster suite, additional file systems and other packages: "Scientific Linux 4.8 has been released. It doesn't have any exciting new features, it is just a nice, stable release. Scientific Linux release 4.8 is based on the rebuilding of RPMs out of SRPMs from Enterprise 4, including Update 8. It also has all errata and bug fixes up until July 20, 2009." Some of the extra software found in Scientific Linux 4.8 include: "915resolution, Alpine, CFITSIO, cluster suite and GFS, FUSE, Unionfs, OpenAFS, Intel wireless firmware and NDISwrapper, JAVA...." See the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download: SL.48.072009.i386.DVD.iso (3,618MB, MD5), SL.48.072009.x86_64.DVD.iso (3,945MB, MD5).

CDlinux is a compact live CD from China suitable for use as a mobile system or a rescue tool. Half a month after our CDlinux 0.9.2 review, the developer announced a new release, CDlinux 0.9.3: "This version added two missing blocks to CDlinux: devel and dri. The new devel module is an attempt to help users compile additional drivers and applications for CDlinux. It now supports compiling the official Linux kernel as well as some third-party kernel modules. And Mesa3D was added to the Community edition for those who may want to run 3D applications or games. This version also fixed several bugs found in previous versions: a possible race between amount and hal, a bug that prevents udev's persistent rules from working properly, and a bug that may make CDlinux fail to save persistent data. All major packages were upgrade to their latest versions." Visit the distribution's news page to read the release announcement. Download: CDlinux_CE-0.9.3.iso (231MB, MD5), CDlinux-0.9.3.iso.gz (69.6MB, MD5).

Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a free book that provides instructions for compiling a basic Linux operating system from scratch, offered primarily as an educational tool for those who wish to learn more about Linux internals. The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS Version 6.5 Release Candidate 1: "The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS Version 6.4. This release includes numerous changes to LFS-6.3 (including update to Linux-2.6.27.4, GCC-4.3.2, Glibc-2.8) and security fixes. It also includes a large amount of editorial work on the explanatory material throughout the book, improving both the clarity and accuracy of the text." Visit the project's news page to read the brief release announcement. The complete book is available for online viewing as well as for downloading: LFS-BOOK-6.5-rc1-HTML.tar.bz2 (175kB).

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second beta release of FreeBSD 8.0: "BETA2 is still a little bit 'rough around the edges' and we still have various debugging tools enabled that cause the system to perform worse than it will when those debugging tools get disabled. We don't know of any issues that will 'eat your data' or anything like that so in that regard it's safe but we don't recommend it for production use quite yet. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the freebsd-current mailing list. ISO images for all supported architectures are available on the FTP sites, and a memory stick image is available for amd64 and i386 architectures." Follow the complete release announcement for further details. Download: 8.0-BETA2-i386-dvd1.iso (822MB, MD5), 8.0-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (930MB, MD5).

Onur Küçük announced the official release of Pardus Linux 2009: "The international CD of Pardus 2009, containing 11 languages to choose from, is also available from FTP servers. This new release contains many bug fixes and enhancements. A new, shiny KDE 4 desktop environment, improved hardware support, latest releases of Pardus Manager tools, up-to-date software repository, and performance improvements are among the many new features of Pardus 2009. Pardus 2009 has also been improved graphically in every part of the distribution. All splash systems, from bootloader to login screen, have been revised. The latest version of Pardus contains up-to-date packages like KDE 4.2.4, Linux kernel 2.6.30.1, OpenOffice.org 3.1.0.6, Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1, GIMP 2.6.6, K3b 1.66, X.Org 1.6.2 and Python 2.6.2." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: Pardus_2009.iso (687MB, MD5, torrent), Pardus_2009_International.iso (696MB, MD5, torrent).

Jereme Hancock has announced the release of Ubuntu Christian Edition 5.0: "After almost a full year without a release we finally have the next release ready. We also have a new development team and focus. The release of Ubuntu Christian Edition 5.0, based on Ubuntu 9.04, is now available for download as well as from our repository. This has been a request from the very beginning. We are excited that now Ubuntu users can simply install Ubuntu Christian Edition using APT or Synaptic. This release is a back-to-basics release and should be considered beta at this point. We are focusing on the functionality for now and will work towards the aesthetics." See the release announcement and turn to the end of the changelog for further information. Download: ubuntu-9.04-christian_edition_v5.0.iso (694MB, MD5).

Steve Langasek has announced the release of Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS, the third update of the distribution's special version with long-term support (3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server): "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS, the third maintenance update to Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS release. This release includes updated server, desktop and alternate installation CDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures. In all, 80 updates have been integrated, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS." Read the full release announcement for a complete list of changes. Download (SHA256): ubuntu-8.04.3-desktop-i386.iso (698MB), ubuntu-8.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso (697MB).

Stefan Lippers-Hollmann has announced the release of sidux 2009-02, a desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's unstable branch: "A little later than originally planned, we now have the pleasure to announce the immediate availability of sidux 2009-02 'Aether', shipping with kernel 2.6.30 and KDE 4.2.4. The ISO is completely based on Debian 'sid', enriched and stabilized with sidux' own packages and scripts. 'Aether' mostly concentrates on integrating KDE 4 into sidux and implementing the changes caused by kernel 2.6.30. We strongly recommend against allowing 'ia32-apt-get'." Read the detailed release notes for further information. Download the complete "KDE Full" or the lightweight "Xfce" live media (MD5): sidux-2009-02-aether-kde-full-i386-amd64-200907141427.iso (2,192MB), sidux-2009-02-xfce-i386.iso (482MB), sidux-2009-02-aether-xfce-amd64-200907141521.iso (489MB).

Version 7.0 of ExTiX, a desktop Linux distribution from Sweden based on paldo GNU/Linux, has been announced: "ExTiX has full Swedish language support and many more programs installed than paldo. This new version of ExTiX Linux live DVD includes the 2.6.30 -extix kernel by default, GNOME 2.26.1, OpenOffice.org 3.0.1, all development tools, GIMP 2.6.6, Skype 2.0.0.72 (free Internet telephony), Apache, all win32 codecs, VLC 1.0.0, GParted 1.3.6, aMule 2.2.2 (file sharing), Firefox 3.0.11, WINE 1.1.20, GNU Emacs 22.3.1 and Epiphany 2.26.1. Unionfs stacks your ExTiX ramdisk on top of a read-only file system on the DVD, the effect being that one can upkg-install, and otherwise modify all of the files on the running system. The standard GNOME and system language is English." Check for more information on the ExTiX website. Download: extix-v7-stable-1080mb-090709.iso (1,116MB, MD5).

Ronald Ropp has released the third beta build of wattOS 1.0, an Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution aiming at running computers in a lightweight but fully-featured way using less energy. What's new? "All of the improvements that you see in Ubuntu 9.04 you see in wattOS beta 3. Many of the improvements are under the hood, but improve the end user experience. Also the continued integration and evolution of the wattOS power management tool. Changes over beta 2 - all of the changes that improve things like hardware support, inclusive of the ongoing improvement of Ubuntu: improved hardware support including wireless networking; ext4 file system support; updates of almost all core applications; full LXDE integration; replacement of wicd with Network Manager; wattOS power manager installed by default; better clean-up of old files; addition of gwibber client." Read the full release announcement. More information like screenshots and video show can be found on wattOS website. Download: wattOSb3.iso (527MB, MD5).

A. J. Venter has announced the availability of Kongoni GNU/Linux 1.12.2, a free African GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware with significant inspiration from the BSD architectures: "It is my pleasure to announce that Kongoni version 1.12.2, code-named Nietzsche, has been officially released. This marks the first official and stable release of the Kongoni GNU/Linux distribution after several development releases. The most significant Kongoni feature is its source-based software installation system (known as a ports tree), a feature that originated in the BSD UNIX world and remains a popular power-users tool on present-day BSD UNIXes, Apple's Mac OS X and source based GNU/Linux distributions. Kongoni, however, is not a source-based distribution. The distribution itself is shipped as binaries which work out of the box. The ports tree is used only for installing additional software." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download (MD5): kongoni32.nietsczhe-1_12_2.iso (667MB, torrent), kongoni64.nietsczhe-1_12_2.iso (686MB, torrent).

Onur Küçük announced the second release candidate of the Turkish Pardus Linux 2009: "The International CD of RC2, containing 11 languages to choose from, is also available in FTP. The new release contains many bugfixes and enhancements after the RC release. New release comes with improved hardware support for printers, scanners, webcams, wireless adapters and DVB devices. Pardus 2009 RC2 has also been improved graphically in every part of the distribution. All the splash systems from bootloader to login screen have been improved. Migration tool, allowing users of Windows to migrate their personal data now comes with the installation CD. Pardus repositories are growing larger and larger everyday, with the main repository over 2000 packages." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: Pardus_2009_RC2.iso (680MB, MD5, torrent), Pardus_2009_International_RC2.iso (693MB, MD5, torrent).

Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 4.3, a bug fix release of the popular live CD designed for hard disk management tasks: "Not only did some bugs get fixed, but a few new programs were added too. chntpw, nilfs-utils 2.0.12, gdisk 0.2.2, Adblock Plus 1.0.2 are now part of Parted Magic's program line-up. These programs have been updated: udev 143, glib 2.20.4, GTK+ 2.16.4, e2fsprogs 1.41.7, Firefox 3.5, FireFTP 1.0.5, Clonezilla 2.3.3-65, Linux kernel 2.6.30.1, p7zip_9.04, Partclone 0.1.1-15, NDISwrapper 1.55. We also took some time to redo the artwork. Many thanks to Jason Vasquez for heading up this effort. I think it's the best-looking version of Parted Magic yet!" Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement. Download: pmagic-4.3.iso.zip (92.8MB, MD5).

Point Clark Networks announced the availability of the community edition of ClarkConnect 5.0, a specialist CentOS-based distribution for routers, gateways and firewalls: "Highlights include: upgrade to CentOS 5.x; complete LDAP integration; protocol filtering; improved bandwidth management; mail quarantine; improved Windows integration (roaming profiles, recycle bin support, file auditing). Version 5.x supports upgrades from ClarkConnect 4.x and later. Upgrades from earlier versions are not supported. When you run the ClarkConnect installer, make sure you select the upgrade option. The 5.0 release is a major operating system upgrade, so it is not possible to perform the upgrade on a live system. In addition, users who have installed third party software packages or used the command-line apt-get tool to install software should also run the following command: yum upgrade. Known Issues: blank screens on first boot with some types of hardware; localization is incomplete." Read the detailed release notes and the changelog for more information. Download (MD5): community-5.0.iso (595MB).

CrunchBang Linux 9.04.01, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager, is now available: "After a slight delay and a prolonged testing period, the final builds of CrunchBang Linux 9.04.01 are now available. As the version number suggests, it is based on Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. As with all previous releases, 9.04.01 has been built from scratch using the Ubuntu MinimalCD. The builds were completed on the 6th July 2009 and contain all security and package updates available at that time. For the first time, CrunchBang Linux is available to download in both 32 and 64-bit builds. Other noticeable changes as a result of moving to the latest stable Ubuntu release include: much improved boot performance with faster start-up times; improved support for wireless cards; ext4 filesystem support." See the release announcement for further details. Download (MD5) the Standard or Lite edition from here: crunchbang-9.04.01.i386.iso (621MB), crunchbang-9.04.01.amd64.iso (674MB), crunchbang-lite-9.04.01.i386.iso (427MB), crunchbang-lite-9.04.01.amd64.iso (437MB).

Miklós Vajna announced the availability of the second pre-release of Frugalware Linux 1.1, a complete, general-purpose distribution designed for intermediate Linux users: "The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.1pre2, the second technical preview of the upcoming 1.1 stable release. Improvements: an x86_64 flash plugin is now part of the default installation; though we ship the latest stable kernel, we did not switch the default value of the 'data' option to 'writeback', the feature which still makes ext3 seem more robust than ext4 at the time of writing. Package updates: GNU C library 2.10.1; Linux kernel 2.6.30; Xorg 7.4 with xorg-server 1.6; GNOME 2.26.3; Xfce 4.6.1; GCC 4.4.0; more than 980 package updates; more than 100 new packages." Here are the brief release announcement and the changelog. Interested beta testers can download the installation DVD image from here: frugalware-1.1pre2-i686-dvd1.iso (4,277MB, SHA1, torrent).

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of PC-BSD 7.1.1, a desktop operating system based on FreeBSD 7.2: "Version 7.1.1 contains a number of bugfixes and improvements from PC-BSD 7.1, including KDE 4.2.4, improvements to printing support, Xorg Server 1.6.1, and much more. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Users who wish to upgrade from PC-BSD 7.0.x / 7.1 are able to do so via the upgrade / repair option during the installation. Software specs: FreeBSD 7.2-Stable, KDE 4.2.4, Xorg 7.4, Nvidia driver 185.18.14, Nvidia driver 173.14.18, Nvidia driver 96.43.11, Nvidia driver 71.86.11." Read the press release, release notes and changelog for more details. Download (MD5): PCBSD7.1.1-x86-DVD.iso (2,030MB, MD5, torrent), PCBSD7.1.1-x64-DVD.iso (2,028MB, MD5, torrent).

Ken Smith announced the availability of the first beta release of FreeBSD 8.0: "The first public test build of the FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE test cycle is now available, 8.0-BETA1. Through the next week or so more information about the release will be posted but here is the current target schedule for the other 'major events': BETA2 July 13, 2009; BETA3 July 20, 2009; RC1 July 27, 2009; RC2 August 17, 2009; RELEASE August 31, 2009. At this point it is not quite ready for production systems but mostly because there is still some ongoing work in a few areas that may cause some changes in things like ABI/API. Debugging supports (WITNESS, malloc debugging, etc.) are also still turned on and those tend to cause a performance hit. As far as we know there are no known issues that would cause data corruption or anything like that, just the issues with performance and potential for changes caused by ongoing work." Read the complete release announcement for further details. Download: 8.0-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (531MB, MD5), 8.0-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (636MB, MD5).

Onur Küçük announced the availability of the release candidate of Pardus Linux 2009: "Highlight of this release is the new International Pardus 2009 ISO. You can now choose any of the 11 languages to install and enjoy Pardus 2009, all in one CD. The new test version of Pardus 2009 contains up-to-date packages like KDE 4.2.4, Linux kernel 2.6.30, OpenOffice.Org 3.1.0, Firefox 3.5, GIMP 2.6.6, K3b 1.66, X.Org 1.6.2pre, and Python 2.6.2. Managers now share the same look and feel, have many optimizations and new features. Hardware support has been improved. Support for many new printers, scanners and webcams has been added, and many bug fixes are integrated to hardware system. Known issues: on some wireless adapters, signal strength can be detected incorrectly." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: Pardus_2009_RC.iso (668MB, MD5, torrent), Pardus_2009_International_RC.iso (695MB, MD5, torrent).

Calculate Linux Desktop (CLD) is a Gentoo-based operating system for PCs and notebooks. Alexander Tratsevskiy has just announced a new version 9.7 of its KDE edition. Main changes: "Support for Italian and Polish has been added. System installation on USB Flash cards has been added. Setting up of a new user account in KDE has been accelerated 2.5 times. Setting up sound card has been added. The identification of PCs and notebooks with two video cards has been added. Option of booting the live DVD image into the cache has been added. File README.html with description of installation has been added to the live CD desktop. Calculate Linux Desktop KDE is 100% compatible with Gentoo." More information in the release announcement. Download: cld-9.7-i686.iso (1,390MB, MD5), cld-9.7-x86_64.iso (1,470MB, MD5).

Patrick Volkerding has announced that Slackware "Current", the distribution's development branch, has reached release candidate status: "The to-do isn't entirely empty here, but it's pretty much down to minor nits, and so we're going to call this release candidate 1 and (mostly) freeze further updates unless they happen to fix problems. Regarding the kernel, 2.6.29.x has been well tested with this userspace and seems like the best choice to ship for production use. Perhaps we can put something else (at least source and configurations) in /testing, though." See the complete changelog for further information regarding updates and changes. As always with Slackware, there are no official ISO images released for download, but unofficial weekly builds are available from slackware.no (MD5): slackware-current-30_Jun_2009-DVD.iso (1,747MB), slackware64-current-30_Jun_2009-DVD.iso (1,682MB).

Red Hat has announced the availability of the beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.4: "Red Hat is pleased to announce the availability of the beta release of 5.4 (Linux kernel 2.6.18-155.el5) for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 family of products. This beta includes the following improvements: full support for the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor; Power Systems LPAR enablement; new SAP resources agents for SAP instance and SAP database; virtual machine (vm.sh) resource agent now uses libvirt; new fencing agent for Cisco MDS SAN switches and IBM LPAR instances via HMC; updated ALSA audio infrastructure; improvements for docking and undocking with CD-ROM in dock; updates to i810, Intel, mga, ATI, and nv drivers; FUSE is fully supported...." Read the rest of the detailed release announcement for a complete list of changes and new features. As usual, this beta release of RHEL is available to existing customers from Red Hat Networks.

Mandriva released the first beta of Mandriva Linux 2009.0: "Mandriva is proud to announce the release of Mandriva Linux 2009 Beta 1 'thornicrofti'. This beta includes the newest release of KDE 4, KDE 4.1 final (with initial implementation of the Mandriva Ia Ora theme, although this is not yet complete), and GNOME 2.23.5. It also uses Firefox 3 by default, and kernel 2.6.26 final. The new beta also switches to using splashy (rather than bootsplash) for boot and shutdown graphics, and adds synchronization support for Windows Mobile 2003 devices. As always, we remind you not to use pre-releases in any critical situation; install them only on a test system or partition, or in a virtual machine. Additionally, we strongly discourage using this pre-release to upgrade from any earlier release of Mandriva Linux, as the transition process from KDE 3 to KDE 4 is not yet fully implemented and you are likely to end up with an unusable system." Read the release announcement and release notes. Download the "Free" installation DVDs and "One" live/install CDs here: mandriva-linux...dvd-i586.iso (3,804MB, MD5), mandriva-linux...dvd-x86_64.iso (3,862MB, MD5), mandriva...KDE4-int-cdrom-i586.iso (701MB, MD5), mandriva...GNOME-int-cdrom-i586.iso (584MB, MD5).

Red Hat announced the official release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4.7: "Red Hat is pleased to announce the availability of 4.7 (kernel-2.6.9-78.EL) for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 family of products. This release includes the following improvements: Virtualization Enhancements, Encryption and Security Enhancements, Tuning and Debugging: systemtap, Tools Enhancement, Networking and IPv6 Enablement, Storage Improvements, Platform Enhancements, Kernel Improvements, Laptop and Desktop Enhancements. The following Technology Preview features are new or enhanced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7: frysk; gcc4." Read the complete release announcement and release notes for details. Existent subscribers can obtain this release from Red Hat Networks.

The fourth update to Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 is available: "The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename etch). In addition to correcting several security problems and a few serious defects in the stable release, for the first time in Debian's history an update for a stable distribution also adds support for newer hardware by giving users the option to install newer drivers. Existing Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 installation CDs and DVDs can continue to be used to install this update. After installation, upgrading via an up-to-date Debian mirror will cause any out of date packages to be updated. However, users of the network-console installation method are strongly encouraged to update their media, see the "Debian Installer" portion of this announcement for more information. Those who install updates frequently from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update." Read the rest of the release announcement for a detailed list of all changes. As always, Debian stable revisions are available for download via Debian's Advanced Package Tool (APT); alternatively, full CD and DVD images will be provided within the next few days.

Paul Sherman announced the release of Absolute Linux 12.1.05, a light-weight, Slackware-based distribution featuring the IceWM window manager: "Big change is with the installer, "Autoinstall" option that takes care of drive partitioning along with the Lilo setup, making install much easier for new-comers to Linux and/or text-based installation. The usual options for installation are also still available. Documentation (HTML instructions for the install) have been updated both online in the ZIP that contains the iso. Here's the changelog: Redesigned installer to include an "autoinstall" option; Corrected internal "name" of links2.desktop file; absgamma.py (utility to adjust gamma of monitor) updated; Java updated to jre-6u7; gnome-icon-theme added for compatibility with some apps; Svgpage moved to CD2." Check the release announcement (also here), changelog, and the package list. Download (MD5): absolute_12.1.05.zip (674MB).

Flavio Pereira de Oliveira today announced the availability of GoblinX Premium 2008.2, a Slackware-based desktop distribution and live CD: "Main upgrades since last stable release: Upgraded all packages. Upgraded Kernel (2.6.24.3), AuFS, Linux live and Squashfs. Added Bookmarks to GoblinX Panel. Added extra folders to be used as package repository. Added media package repository to Slapt-getrc. Added package upgrade check to Xfce panel with Xfce4-smartpm-plugin. Added interface to build module with Slapt-get help. Added initrd.img to be used by Suspend/Hibernate after install. Added Isolinux option to not load customization during boot..." Visit the project's news page to read the full announcement. The product is available from On-disk.com. All modules of the Premium edition can be found on http://goblinx.linuxish.net/modules/, and users can also rebuild another ISO file to add more modules.

Heiko Zuerker has announced the release of Devil-Linux 1.2.15, a live firewall and server distribution. "Devil-Linux 1.2.15 is available for download. The changes include lots of program and security updates. See the changelog for details." Among the changes are: ImageMagick can now correctly identify file types again; added arping tool; added dev86 to build environment; added hotfix to allow ntop links against net-snmp; added missing LSI fusion SCSI drivers to initial ramdisk; corrected DHCP compile; corrected motion compile; downgraded iptables to 1.3.7 (due to missing extensions, i.e. connlimit, time and others); increased compatibility of strongSwan for Windows and Cisco clients. Read the rather brief release announcement and the changelog for more information. Download (MD5): devil-linux-1.2.15-i486.tar.bz2 (206MB), devil-linux-1.2.15-i586-SMP.tar.bz2 (207MB), devil-linux-1.2.15-i686-SMP-server.tar.bz2 (210MB).

Martin Ultima announced a new beta release of Ultima Linux 8.4, a fast, powerful, and convenient computer operating system which emphasizes a "common sense" approach to development and eases common system administration tasks. "Right now it's only available as a slightly-more-bloated-than-usual x86 LiveCD; due mainly to size reasons, an AMD64 version has been postponed until a later date (but you can grab the new ultima-scripts and built it yourself, from the package repository). As far as the new codebase goes: The desktop code is essentially "feature-complete"; servers and development tools are a work in progress and will be the focus of the next beta. Among other features, in no particular order, we have kernel 2.6.24.7 with SquashFS+LZMA support; ext2/ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, and JFS filesystems (XFS default)..." See the release announcement and release notes for more information. Download (MD5) the live CD image: ultimalinux-8.4...LiveCD.iso (692MB). Update: The 64-bit version is now available: ultimalinux-8.4...AMD64-LiveCD.iso (703MB).

Patrick Verner announced the 3.0 release of Parted Magic, a specialist live CD distribution designed to facilitate hard disk management tasks: "This new release of Parted Magic has the most aggressive changelog of any release to date. Almost everything has been updated and redesigned while doing our best to maintain the same user interface. The most significant changes are the additions of HAL and dbus, new Xorg server, basic wireless detection, FireFTP, udpcast, Linux-2.6.26, and many other updated and new programs. Parted Magic also has a new GRUB version of the iso and the USB version is GRUB-ready. People have been asking for a "Save Session" function and we added it." Visit the project's news page and check out the latest changelog for a complete list of fixes and package updates. Download: pmagic-3.0.iso.zip (43.8MB, MD5).

The second release candidate for Endian Firewall 2.2 "Community" edition, a firewall appliance based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, was announced: "The Endian Team is glad to announce the latest release candidate of Endian Firewall Community. RC2 contains many bug fixes since the previous release candidate. Endian Firewall Community is an all-in-one Linux security distribution that turns every system into a full featured security appliance. Designed with usability in mind, Endian developed a solution that is extremely flexible, easy to install and manage. The Community version has been warmly embraced by the open source community... This is a bugfix release, for the full change log see http://bugs.endian.it/changelog_page.php. Happy Testing!" Read the release announcement for further information. Download: EFW-COMMUNITY-2.2-rc2-200807241531.iso (118MB, MD5).

Paul Cutler announced the release of Foresight Linux 2.0.4, an rPath-based distribution showcasing the latest GNOME technologies: "The Foresight project is excited to announce the latest release of Foresight, the Foresight GNOME Edition 2.0.4. This release features a brand new theme, and a number of minor updates and bug fixes, notably a problem when trying to install on certain RAID setups. This latest version also introduces the Foresight GNOME Lite Edition. For the first time, Foresight is available for installation on one CD, and features Foresight's lightning fast tar-based installer. This edition does not include OpenOffice.org and is English only to reduce installation size. Users who choose to install the Foresight GNOME Lite Edition can easily upgrade to the full version." Read the full release announcement and release notes for further details. Download (SHA1): foresight-2.0.4-x86-dvd1.iso (1,178MB, torrent), foresight-2.0.4-x86_64-dvd1.iso (1,251MB, torrent).

GaÃ«l Duval announced the availability of Ulteo Application System 1.02, code name "Sirius" Stable: "The Ulteo Application System is a FREE installable version of Ulteo, that ships with hundreds applications and innovative features that include: Global Ulteo authentication; Automatic data backup/synchronization to/from the Ulteo Online Desktop; "My Digital Life" panel to organize your digital life easier and better; Automatic system and application incremental upgrade; Very fast to install, very easy to use." "Sirius" Stable is an installable liveCD that offers a Windows alternative; it comes with a lot of applications by default, including Firefox 2.0 and OpenOffice.org 2.3. Learn more here. Download (MD5): ulteo-sirius-1.02-install-i386.iso (692MB). Also announced is Ulteo Virtual Desktop Beta3: "It allows you to use the best Linux applications on the Windows(TM) operating system. It's been designed for individuals and corporate users who want to have Linux and Windows applications together on the same desktop without the hassles of dual booting or virtualization. It already got great feedback from the IT press during the past three months. If you would enjoy Ulteo Virtual Desktop on a preloaded USB key that wouldn't require any installation, please let us know!" Learn more here.

A new version of IPCop, a user-friendly firewall distribution geared towards home and SOHO users, was released: "Update is split into two parts because of a kernel update to accommodate free space limitation. 1.4.19 contains some packages updates, most notably a dnsmasq update to be immune on recent dns advisory. 1.4.20 installs the second part of the kernel update and configure the new kernel. 1.4.19 could be installed separately from 1.4.20. A reboot is not needed after 1.4.19 installation... Changes summary: Upgrade openssh to 4.7p1; Include lzo binary so, it will match openssl version if openssl is updated; Update dnsmasq to 2.45; Update tzdata to 2008d; Update pcre from 7.4 to 7.7; Update apache to 1.3.41..." Read the detailed release notes. Download (MD5): ipcop-1.4.20-install-cd.i386.iso (50.3MB). Update:IPCop 1.4.21 released; only the update and the sources are available.

Jeff Moe announced a bug fix release of BLAG Linux And GNU labeled as 90001, a single-CD desktop distribution based on Fedora: "It comes on a single CD (684 megs), is easily installed, and user friendly. This release follows quickly on the heels of BLAG 90000, as there were a few annoying issues with that, some of which have been sorted, such as some broken dependencies. A number of packages have been added to the CD, some of which appeared in earlier blag releases, such as: bittorrent, freej, gcc, gqview, gthumb, thunderbird, vnc-server, xchat. The CD has 97 package updates including a new kernel-libre-2.6.25.10-86.fc9.1, firefox 3.0.1, gnome/gtk2/nautilus packages, pidgin, xorg and more... Known issues with this release: Use yum instead of apt, or uncomment GPG line in /etc/apt/apt.conf (or install those keys); Automajick kickstart installs are not currently available; On some installs you have to hit ctrl-alt-f7 after firstboot when you add a user; this is only needed the first time." Read the complete release announcement for further details. Download: BLAG-90001-i386.iso (684MB, SHA1SUM, torrent).

Ubuntu Muslim Edition (UbuntuME) 8.04.1, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring Islamic software, a Quran study tool and a web content filtering utility, was released, in the form of not just an update but a full new DVD with tons of software: "The Ubuntu Muslim Edition team is proud to announce the release of UbuntuME 8.04.1. This release is only available as an installable DVD. Highlights: WebStrict (parental control tool) enabled by default (so as browsing the Internet is safe); Zekr 0.7.0 (Quran study tool) installed and configured to play Quran recitations; Minbar and Firefox "Pray Times" addon installed; Monajat (display Islamic prayers) Thwab (encyclopedia); UbuntuME artworks: usplash, login screen, Islamic wallpapers, theme etc." See the complete release announcement and release notes for more information. Download (MD5): ubuntuME-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso.001 (1,980MB) and ubuntuME-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso.002 (1,939MB). Also available via BitTorrent: ubuntuME-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso (3,919MB).

Bogdan Radulescu announced the availability of the final version of NimbleX 2008, a Slackware-based mini distribution: "This version gets significant cleanups since NimbleX 2008RC, Bluetooth finally works OK, some improvements to the USB installer, significant changes on how NimbleX boots from remote locations (PXE & HTTP), several bug fixes, updates and several other things. I managed to make NimbleX a little slimmer and I also managed to squeeze in the latest VirtualBox so that people can run/test other OSs inside NimbleX. Partimage was added so you can easily clone disks and partitions with NimbleX thus resulting in some mass deployment functionality when users know their way around Linux. I guess here a small tutorial will be posted at some point..." Read the full release announcement for more information. Download (MD5): NimbleX-2008.iso (200MB).

Following version 0.6 just four days ago, a new version of xPUD was released today, boasting "same features, 20% smaller": "xPUD is a small and fast booting LiveUSB, usually boots into X within 15-seconds, and starts an easy-to-use UI as soon as possible. Being a Ubuntu derivative with APT/dpkg system, the rootfs is quite small: only 67MB of core image, including Ubuntu 8.04 compatible kernel, Xvesa as xserver, web browser (firefox), media player (mplayer) and input method (scim). This project is under heavy development, and we're looking forward to any kind of feedback, please visit http://xpud.org/ for more information." Read the release notes. Download: xpud-0.7.zip (76.3MB, MD5).

After almost two and a half years' development, a release candidate of Magic Linux, a community distribution from China, is now ready for download and testing. Updates since beta 2 include: numerous upgraded packages like the Linux kernel, JRE, Firefox, K3b and lrcShow-II; amended packages of magic-system-config, initscripts, hal, and Amarok; some applications replaced with newly introduced packages for the sake of better user experience; added packages like lynx and kdegraphics-extras; new policy on kernels and USB automount; expanded Magic Linux depository. This release is available as a DVD edition, a cut down CD edition, and a live CD edition with a user account magiclinux:linuxfans and a superuser account root:magicfans. More details can be found in the release announcement (in simplified Chinese). Download: MagicLinux-2.1.rc1.dvd-1.iso (946MB, MD5), MagicLinux-2.1.rc1.cd-1.iso (693MB, MD5), MagicLinux-2.1.rc1.livecd-1.iso (606MB, MD5).

Matthew Dillon announced the availability of DragonFly BSD 2.0: "2.0 is our eighth major DragonFly release. DragonFly's policy is to only commit bug fixes to release branches." Changes in this release include: the HAMMER filesystem featuring crash recovery on-mount (without fsck) and queueless incremental mirroring, numerous kernel changes like native fairq-queue implementation and native connection state recovery, various hardware changes like added drivers and better USB survivability, userland changes like blacklist for weak Debian-generated SSH keys and improved manual pages and documentation, a lot of contributed software like new versions of BIND, OpenSSH, tnftpd, and GCC. Fortran was removed from the base system, along with other old stuff like legacy device drivers. See the rather brief release announcement and the detailed 2.0 release notes for more information. Download (MD5): dfly-2.0.0_REL.iso.gz (129MB, torrent).

The first update to the 0.7 release of BeleniX, a live CD based on OpenSolaris, is now available: "This update brings in the latest development OpenSolaris build 93 and updates to KDE 3.5.9 among other changes, bugfixes. Since this release also includes the latest Caiman installer, upgrades from this release will become possible going forward. A complete list of changes is below: Based on ON Build 93 that has new drivers (like ATIgfx) among other stuff; Included the rum driver; Nvidia driver updated to 173.14.05; OSS updated to 4.0-1016; Updated Fully Open X bits; KDE updated to 3.5.9 and some upstream patches removed; Firefox 3.0.1; /sbin/sh is now ksh93; Sham's RAM based Boot integrated - In Grub screen select more options to see that boot option..." Read the full release announcement. Download (MD5): belenix_0.7.1.iso (696MB).

A new release of Absolute Linux, version 12.1.03, is ready for download; it is a release candidate as it is based on Slackware-current. Changes: "Updated firefox to 3.0.1; Updated nasm, dnsmasq and e2fsprogs, as well as ati, nv and intel video drivers; Added video drivers for Mach64 and r128; Mesa updated to 7.0.3 (bugfix release); Removed HPLIP for the time being; Tweaked .desktop file for avidemux and ROX sendto handling; Corrected unneeded import of wx in absAddUser.py script (causing it not to run on default install without wxPython installed)." Read the changelog and the package list. Download (MD5): absolute_12.1.03.zip (666MB). Update: version 12.1.04 is available for download, with CD2 of extra software.

The first release candidate (marked as BETA 025) for Linux Mint 5 "Elyssa" Xfce Community Edition is out and available for download: "This is the first BETA release of the Xfce Community Edition for Linux Mint 5, codename Elyssa, based on Daryna and compatible with Ubuntu Hardy and its repositories. All mint applications were improved in Elyssa. For the list improvements of mintUpdate, mintUpload and mintInstall, read the Elyssa Main release notes... mintUpdate was refactored and its memory usage was drastically reduced. On some systems the amount of RAM used by mintUpdate after a few days went from 100MB to 6MB. Mozilla also greatly improved the memory usage in Firefox between version 2 and 3. Elyssa comes with kernel version 2.6.24 which features a brand new scheduler called CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler). The kernel scheduler is responsible for the CPU time allocated to each process. With CFS the rules have changed." Read the full release notes and the brief release announcement for further information. Download: LinuxMint-5-XFCE-BETA-025.iso (682MB, MD5).

Patrice Guay announced the release of CentOS 5.2 i386 live CD: "The CentOS Development team is pleased to announce the availability of the CentOS 5.2 i386 Live CD. This CD is based on our CentOS-5.2 i386 distribution. It can be used as a Workstation, with the following software: openoffice.org 2.3.0, firefox 3.0, thunderbird 2.0.0, pidgin 2.3.1, scribus 1.3.3.2, xchat 2.6.6, k3b 0.12.17, gimp 2.2.13. It can also be used as a rescue CD with the following tools: memtest86+-1.65, Full set of LVM and RAID command line tools, QTParted, Nmap and NMapFE, traceroute, samba-3.0.28 with cifs kernel support to connect to Windows file shares, System Log Viewer, GUI Hardware Device Manager." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download: CentOS-5.2-i386-LiveCD.iso (697MB, SHA1SUM).

Rene Mayrhofer announced the release of Gibraltar Firewall 2.6, a Debian-based firewall distribution: "We are pleased to announce Gibraltar release 2.6. It will be the last version based on kernel 2.4, the next Gibraltar release 3.0 will use kernel 2.6. Major new features in this release include official support for "Snort" as intrusion detection system and full integration of the Puresight Enterprise variant for advanced user-based authorization and reporting. Additionally, this release: now allows SSL Explorer (TM) plugins to be installed; substantially improves traffic shaping performance; supports transparent virus scanning for HTTP, POP3, and FTP even without a harddisk; and includes the beginning of full WLAN access point functionality. At this time, Atheros-based cards are supported and can be configured via the web interface. Future releases will expand on this to e.g. include full 802.1x support." Read the full release announcement and changelog. Download: gibraltar-2.6.iso.bz2 (260MB, SHA1).

Christophe Lincoln announced a new beta (called Cooking) release of SliTaz GNU/Linux, perhaps the smallest desktop distribution on earth: "So, we released a new Cooking version with a lot of improvement from 1.0. SliTaz use Openbox has default Window manager and Obconf to configure it graphically, update to Kernel 2.6.25.5 with build-in support for XFS and wifi through the packages manager. The desktop avec icons, Packages can now be managed through the graphical Packages Manager Tazpkgbox. The image ISO of 28.6 MB provides also MPlayer, Notecase, Lua, Hardinfo, many updates and more than 200 packages added to the repository. SliTaz can now also boot from the Internet! Web boot for everyone with gPXE and http://boot.slitaz.org/." Read the official release announcement titled "Cooking 20080716 - Web boot and MPlayer" on SliTaz website. Download: slitaz-cooking.iso (28.6MB, MD5).

Jeff Moe announced the release of BLAG Linux And GNU 90000, a single-CD desktop distribution based on Fedora: "It has been a while since I've sent out an announcement, but quite a bit has happened since our last release, 70000. Alpha releases based on Fedora 8 and 9 made regular appearances. Linux-libre, a project to make a branch of the Linux kernel with non-free software removed, has flourished. This is the first "major" release of BLAG to include this kernel by default... We have a new repository tracking Fedora rawhide, with always the latest and greatest, it's BLAGHEAD: Software from the Future. A new mailing list has been added." Read the complete release announcement for further details. Download: BLAG-90000-i386.iso (606MB, SHA1SUM, torrent).

Yann Le Doaré announced a new release of LinuxConsole, an independently developed, modular Linux live CD: "This '1.0.2008' release has been built from a new toolchain based on gcc 4.2.2 and glibc 2.7. The 2.4 kernel is not available for that release, but you can continue using 2007 ISOs if you have to install linuxconsole on very old computers. The kernel is 2.6.25.4, patched with squashfs (module format for linuxconsole) and aufs (can write on modules). Since bootsplash is obsolete, usplash replaces it. GNOME is available in 2.20 release, since it's very stable; an update to 2.22 will be available soon. KDE is in 3.5.9 release, but not present on CD (not enough disk space). You can install it with modules manager or wait the 'DVD' release... DVD release will be ready in September." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement. Download: linuxconsole1.0.2008-cd.iso (681MB, MD5).

Steve Langasek announced the availability of the slightly delayed second alpha release of Ubuntu 8.10, code name "Intrepid Ibex": "Welcome to Intrepid Ibex Alpha-2, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.10. Pre-releases of Intrepid are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs. Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Intrepid development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Intrepid." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details. The "alternate" installation images are available from mirrors: intrepid-alternate-i386.iso (697MB, MD5, torrent), intrepid-alternate-amd64.iso (696MB, MD5, torrent), along with "Server" ones. Also released: Kubuntu8.10 Alpha 2 and Xubuntu8.10 Alpha 2.

A new development version of Elive, a Debian-based distribution featuring the Enlightenment 17 window manager, has been released: "The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of development version 1.7.10. This release includes: Prism2: better prism2* wireless cards support. Flash: Macromedia Flash small update. Xorg: Xorg updates + a lot of fixes in Elive configurations of Xorg, some for Nvidia. e17: Some e17 gadgets configured on the fly. So for instance, if your computer supports cpufreq, that gadget is added automatically. Same with battery. If your computer does NOT support these features, the gadgets will not be added :). Drivers: New drivers added for: gigabit-ethernet Atheros cards, Fujistu Siemens Amilo M7400 laptop modules, HP Omnibook Pavillon, Toshiba Satellite, and some laptops manufactured by Compal Electronics, Ricoh R5u870 webcams supported, 'quickcam messenger' webcams supported too, 10-gigabit-ethernet Solarflare (solarstorm SFC4000) cards. ATI: fglrx updated to version 8.6. Nvidia: nvidia updated to version 173.14.09." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: elive_1.7.10_unstable.iso (672MB, MD5).

After an internal test version, the second (but first public) alpha release of Mandriva Linux 2009.0, unexpectedly announced as 2009 Spring Alpha 2, is hitting the mirror servers. "This alpha introduces several significant changes, most obviously the inclusion of KDE 4 - 4.1 beta 2, specifically - as the default version of KDE, and the latest development version of GNOME, 2.23.4. The kernel has also been updated to release 2.6.26rc7. We emphasize that the KDE change is a major one that is not yet entirely completed and likely to cause many bugs. As always - but more importantly than ever - we remind you not to use pre-releases in any critical situation; install them only on a test system or partition, or in a virtual machine. Additionally, we strongly discourage using this pre-release to upgrade from any earlier release of Mandriva Linux, as the transition process from KDE 3 to KDE 4 is not yet fully implemented and you are likely to end up with an unusable system." Read the release announcement and release notes for more information. Download the "Free" installation DVDs and "One" live CDs here: mandriva-linux...dvd-i586.iso (3,918MB, MD5), mandriva-linux...dvd-x86_64.iso (3,915MB, MD5), mandriva...KDE-int-cdrom-i586.iso (652MB, MD5), mandriva...GNOME-int-cdrom-i586.iso (555MB, MD5).

Flavio Pereira de Oliveira announced the availability of GoblinX 2.7 Standard, a Slackware-based desktop distribution and live CD: "After more than four months of development, as GoblinX 2.6 was released at February 18, we are pleased to announce the availability of the new stable edition... It includes five Windows Managers: KDE, Fluxbox, Xfce, Enlightenment and WindowMaker. Main upgrades since rc01 edition: Corrected some small errors and bugs. Upgraded some packages and libraries, including some security fixes. Added extra folders to be used as package repository. Added media package repository to Slapt-getrc. Added interface to build module with Slapt-get help. Added GUI for deactivate script to let anyone remove modules of the livecd. Added directly autologin to Xorg as user for the installed system. Added package upgrade check to Xfce panel with Xfce4-smartpm-plugin." Visit the project's news page to read the full announcement. Download: GoblinX-2.7.iso (305MB, MD5).

Paul Sherman has announced the release of Absolute Linux 12.1.02, the second bug-fix and security update of the stable 12.1 series: "Absolute Linux 12.1.02. Changes: Firefox updated to 3.0, this necessitated installation of XULRunner 1.9, which can also subsequently be used to build Firebird and other applications; MPlayer plugin on Firefox 3 is a wash - had to go with gecko-mplayer; updated PCMan File Manager with much more robust handling of file types; added isomaster for working with CD image files; added KFileReplace; added a few games (Monsterz, LBreakout2, Njam and BumpRace); added scripts and desktop files to convert FLV and OGG video to AVI; added lshw, along with script (run_lshw) that outputs in HTML format and opens the results in Links; updated to xorg-server 1.4.2; Fox (toolkit) and Fluxbox moved to CD2." Read the rest of the changelog for further details. Download (MD5): absolute_12.1.02.zip (673MB).

Miklós Vajna has announced the availability of the second pre-release of Frugalware Linux 0.9: "The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 0.9pre2, the second technical preview of the upcoming 0.9 stable release. A short and incomplete list of changes since 0.9pre1: FUN -0.3.0, which now supports news notification (newsletters, releases, etc.); many less popular packages are no longer installed by default, reducing the required size of the default installation; replaced the ipw wireless drivers with the newer iwl ones; reworked the ROX environment, binary packages are available again; more than 2,700 small changes; package updates - GCC 4.3.1, Firefox 3.0, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1; new packages - icecc (a set of configuration tools for IceWM), libotr and irssi-otr, 10+ new Fortune modules, 20+ new games, more than 200 other new packages." Here is the full release announcement. Download: frugalware-0.9pre2-i686-dvd1.iso (4,277MB, SHA1, torrent).

Gentoo Linux 2008.0 has been released: "The 2008.0 final release is out! Code-named 'It's got what plants crave,' this release contains numerous new features, including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the live CD. Live DVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree. Highlights: updated installer - the installer now only performs networkless installations using the packages and ebuild tree on the Live CD; improved hardware support - moving to the 2.6.24 kernel added many new drivers for hardware released since the 2007.0 release; updated packages - Portage 2.1.4.4, a 2.6.24 kernel, Xfce 4.4.2, GCC 4.1.2 and glibc 2.6.1." Read the complete release announcement for further information. Download the installable live CDs from here: livecd-i686-installer-2008.0-r1.iso (688MB, torrent), livecd-amd64-installer-2008.0-r1.iso (696MB, torrent).

Canonical has announced the availability of Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, the first update of a product that comes with free long-term security support: "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, the first maintenance update to Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS release. This is the first maintenance release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which continues to be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until April 2011 on desktops and April 2013 on servers. The Ubuntu team has focused their efforts on resolving issues reported by people deploying Ubuntu out in the real world, including: Firefox has been upgraded to the final 3.0 release; the Samba client allows LANMAN authentication again; various problems with the FUSE interface to GNOME's new virtual file system have been fixed...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download (MD5): ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso (694MB, torrent), ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso (693MB, torrent). Other members of the Ubuntu family of distributions have also been updated; that includes Kubuntu (download) and Kubuntu-KDE4 (download), Xubuntu (download), Ubuntu Studio (download) and Mythbuntu (download).

Flavio Pereira de Oliveira has announced the release of GoblinX 2.7 Micro edition, a Slackware-based mini live CD with Fluxbox as the sole window manager: "GoblinX Micro 2.7 is released. GoblinX Micro is the smallest version of our distribution and contains only Fluxbox as a windows manager and GTK+ applications. Main upgrades since RC1: corrected some small errors and bugs; added xf86-video-openchrome and cdstatus; added an interface to build modules with Slapt-get help; added a GUI for removing modules from the live CD; added more Nautilus actions; added Totem as an audio CD player option; added extra folders to be used as a package repository; added a media package repository to Slapt-getrc; added some missing applications to Fluxbox menu; added bookmarks to Fluxbox menu; added a pre-defined menu with icons as an option; upgraded some packages and libraries." Visit the distribution's news page to read the full release announcement. Download (MD5): GoblinX.Micro-2.7.iso (100MB).

Christian dos Santos Ferreira has announced the release of Poseidon Linux 3.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution enhanced with software for scientific and academic purpose, including applications for numerical modelling, 2D/3D/4D visualisation and statistics: "Our team is proud to announce the new Poseidon Linux 3.0! Poseidon Linux was designed as a friendly and complete desktop, based on open source software and aimed at the scientific community. This operating system is based on Ubuntu and inspired by Quantian Linux. It offers several specific tools in the areas of GIS, 3D Visualization, Mathematics, Statistics and several other fields of research. It also has all the software expected in a modern desktop, such as office suites, web browsers, e-mail readers, etc. The new release supports Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, English and German languages." Here is the brief release announcement (in Portuguese), and further information is also available on the project's English web site. Download (MD5): Poseidon_3.0.iso (1,693MB).

Paul Cutler has announced the release of Foresight Linux 2.0.3, an rPath-based distribution showcasing the latest GNOME technologies: "The Foresight team is proud to announce the latest release of Foresight Linux. Foresight 2.0.3 GNOME edition is a minor release, featuring the latest release of GNOME, 2.22.3. GNOME 2.22.3 features a new login manager for users, as well as a number of bug fixes and updates. Foresight 2.0.3 also includes Banshee 1.0 as the default media manager, an updated kernel, and a number of software updates. Foresight uses a rolling release - users who are already using Foresight have the option to install these updates via PackageKit. There is no need for users already using Foresight to download a new image, the updates are already available!" Read the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download (SHA1): foresight-2.0.3-x86-dvd1.iso (1,182MB), foresight-2.0.3-x86_64-dvd1.iso (1,255MB).

Fred Emmott has announced the release of Slamd64 Linux 12.1, an unofficial port of Slackware Linux to the x86_64 architecture: "Slamd64 12.1 is released, containing major new features such as GCC 4.2.3, SCIM, and greatly improved CJK support. Additionally, installation from FTP and HTTP sources is now supported. This release is mostly an incremental improvement over 12.0, including: Linux 2.6.24.5, X11 7.3.0+, glibc 2.7, Apache 2.2.8 with SSL support and PHP 5.2.5, KDE 3.5.9, Xfce 4.4.2, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 2.0.0.14, Java (JRE and JDK) 6u6. Like previous releases of Slamd64, 12.1 provides seamless FHS-compliant 32-bit compatibility, via a multilib system (/lib for 32-bit libraries and /lib64 for 64-bit libraries). This provides easier and increased support for both existing 32-bit software (in most cases, you can just install a package designed for Slackware with no special work needed)." Read the release announcement and release notes for more information. Download: slamd64-12.1-dvd.iso (4,169MB, MD5).

The first release candidate of Granular Linux, a PCLinuxOS-based desktop distribution, is out and ready for testing: "It is my pleasure to announce the availability of Granular 1.0 RC, the last development release before the final Granular 1.0. Features and changes: Granular 1.0 now uses its own new repository; all updated packages, including Linux kernel 2.6.24.7, KDE 3.5.9, Enlightenment 0.16.999, Firefox 3.0, Thunderbird 2.0.0.14, KOffice 1.6.3, Compiz Fusion 0.7.6, GIMP 2.4.6; updated artwork; out-of-the-box support for audio and video files; pre-installed multimedia plugins for Firefox; support for multimedia keyboards and the extra laptop keys; read/write support for NTFS partitions; video drivers installation tool." Read the release announcement and release notes for more detailed list of changes and new features. Download: granular-1.0-rc-cd.iso (694MB, MD5, torrent).

Red Hat has announced a beta release of its first minor update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5: "Red Hat is pleased to announce the availability of the beta release of 5.1 (kernel 2.6.18-36.el5) for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 family of products. This beta release includes the following improvements: Completion of virtualization support on Itanium2 platforms; support for 32-bit PV guests on 64-bit AMD64/Intel 64 hosts; improved support for HV guests; improved ACPI power management support including support for S3 suspend to RAM and S4 hibernate; technology preview of a Firewire stack which will be fully supported in a subsequent minor release..., general bug fixing and driver updates." Please see the release announcement for a complete list of changes and improvements. This beta release of RHEL 5.1 is only available to the subscribers of Red Hat Networks.

Auke Kok has announced the first beta release of Lunar Linux 1.6.2, a source-based distribution designed for intermediate and advanced Linux users: "We're happy to announce the first beta release of a new series of Lunar linux installer ISOs. Our new ISOs will be as easy to install as 1.6.1, but pack an extra punch - this series of ISOs pre-installs a basic Xfce 4.4.1 desktop with X.Org 7.2, together with Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Audacious, GIMP and a few other basic desktop utilities. We hope to make it easy for everyone to both enjoy playing and learning from a true source distro environment and be productive quickly. The extra applications will give new users a fast start and should install easily on most (even brand new) hardware with the 2.6.22.1 kernel, but also give the user a welcome feeling on a freshly installed lunar-linux system." More details in the release announcement. Download: lunar-1.6.2-beta1-i686.iso.bz2 (453MB, MD5).

Miklós Vajna has announced the availability of the second preview of Frugalware Linux 0.7: "The Frugalware Developer Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 0.7pre2, the second technical preview of the upcoming 0.7 stable release. A short and incomplete list of changes since 0.7pre1: new graphical configuration tool, Gnetconfig, to tweak network settings; setup now puts the installer log to the target system, so that the log is not lost; the default time zone and keyboard layout is now language dependent; new Italian translation in the installer; Linux kernel 2.6.22 (+ fixes); GCC 4.2.1, with several bug fixes and a usable Java browser plugin for systems where the binary is not available; OpenOffice.org 2.2.1; Vim spellcheck dictionaries for various languages; more than 100 new packages...." Here is the full release announcement. Download: frugalware-0.7pre2-i686-dvd1.iso (4,280MB, MD5).

Jereme Hancock has announced the release of Ubuntu Christian Edition 3.3: "We are excited to announce the release of Ubuntu CE v3.3. This release adds a few new features and several updates and fixes. This release comes just after Ubuntu CE's 1st birthday. We have had a great year and are looking forward to the continued development in the year to come. We have added the WhatWouldJesusDownload toolbar to Firefox. This toolbar gives quick access to many of the great tools available at WhatWouldJesusDownload, the parent site of the Ubuntu CE project. The Ubuntu CE main menu icon has also been enhanced with an overlay to give it a more unique look. This is accomplished using gDesklets which also powers the desktop verse feature." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: Ubuntu_7.04_i386_Christian_Edition_v3_3.iso (699MB, MD5).

The second stable release of 64 Studio, a Debian-based distribution with a collection of software for digital content creation, is now available: "64 Studio 2.0 is designed to retain compatibility with Debian Etch, to create a long-lived and stable creative desktop. We combine the stability and quality of Etch with a specialised real-time pre-emption kernel and the latest creative tools demanded by multimedia artists. Our tweaks to Debian include simplified installation and default settings which help get production under way quickly. It's our target that users should be able to get from a blank hard disc to a fully hardware-optimised and usable creative desktop in just half an hour." A Live CD version of 64 Studio is also available. Find more details in the release announcement for further details. Download: 64studio_2.0_amd64.iso (801MB, MD5), 64studio_2.0_i386.iso (773MB, MD5).

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. A new maintenance release is now available: "Today marks the release of version 89.2 for the x86/AMD64, PowerPC, and UML/Xen platforms. Finnix 89.2 is a maintenance release. Base system has been dist-upgraded to Debian's testing 2007-07-26. A new kernel was planned for this release, but was not released due to problems between Finnix and available union file systems. Because of this, 89.2 still comes with kernel 2.6.18, but has a few backported drivers." Please see the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download (MD5): finnix-89.2.iso (111MB), finnix-ppc-89.2.iso (123MB).

DesktopBSD 1.6 RC3 is now available for download from mirrors or via BitTorrent: "This release candidate is considered a large step towards a final release 1.6 with major changes such as: X.Org release 7.2, improving support for modern graphics hardware; NVIDIA graphics driver, providing hardware 3D acceleration for NVIDIA video cards; Latest FreeBSD 6-STABLE as base system with High Definition Audio (HDA) support... Upgrades from 1.0 and previous release candidates are supported. An additional language CD and 64-bit (AMD64) DVD will be released soon." Here is the formal release announcement. Download: DesktopBSD-1.6RC3-i386-CD.iso (665MB, MD5).

Parted Magic is a 30MB Linux live CD/USB/PXE with its elemental purpose being to partition hard drives. Parted Magic 1.8 is out and it has some new features and many updated programs: "We added dd_rhelp, sdparm, mbr, and xfburn for starters. Updated programs: linux-2.6.22, e2fsprogs-1.40.2, ntfs-3g-1.710, dd_rescue-1.13, ddrescue-1.5, leafpad-0.8.11, file-4.21, testdisk-6.7, mdadm-2.6.1, pciutils-2.2.5, syslinux-3.51, isomaster-1.0, hdparm-7.4, xfsprogs_2.8.21-1, busybox-1.5.1, and usbutils-0.72. All menus are bypassed now. After the syslinux menu, it boots to the desktop without any other interruptions. You can now create the live USB from the live CD by using our new 'USB Operations' program..." Please see the project's website for further details. Download: pmagic-1.8.iso (35.6MB).

The fifth release candidate of SLAX 6.0.0, a Slackware-based mini live CD, is available for download and testing: "This is SLAX 6 release candidate 5, including a few modules and 27 languages. SLAX 6 rc5 still includes Linux Kernel 2.6.21.5 and KDE 3.5.7. The Slackware base has been upgraded to Slackware 12.0. Klaptopdaemon has been recompiled in order to show the tray icon properly. SLAX now shutdowns properly, while it did reboot instead of shutdown in rc4. Removal of modules by using SLAX Module Manager is fixed, it did allow a busy aufs branch to be removed in rc4, which may cause troubles..." Please see the announcement and changelog for further details. Download: slax-6.0.0-rc5.iso (199MB).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the availability of a development release of the new KDE Community Edition of Linux Mint 3.0 "Cassandra": "The KDE Edition of Linux Mint is now a Community project and it is maintained by Jamie Boo. A stable release is expected next week. If you are interested in the KDE Edition, please test this BETA release... This release is based on Bianca-KDE and compatible with all Feisty repositories. It comes with KDE 3.5.6 and a Linux kernel 2.6.20-15. Openoffice, Thunderbird and Sunbird replaced Koffice and Kontact. Beryl 0.2.1 is included with Beryl-Manager." Read the brief announcement and the release notes. Download (MD5) via BitTorrent: LinuxMint-3.0-KDE-BETA-013.iso (952MB).

The SME Server development team is pleased to announce the release of SME Server 7.2: "This release is based on CentOS 4.5 and all packages have been updated to the latest releases. This release contains many new features, all released updates for SME Server 7.1 and fixes for many reported problems. Upgrades will be available by CD, the Software Installer and command line. All users should upgrade to this release." Follow this forum thread for release announcement and a note on upgrading with yum. Download: smeserver-7.2-i386.iso (515MB, MD5).

The first preview release of sidux 2007-03, a full featured Debian sid based live CD with a special focus on hard disk installations, a clean upgrade path within sid and additional hard- and software support, is now ready for testing: "After some late trouble with Xdialog due to the libglib1.2ldbl transition and unscheduled downtime of debian's i386 build, we're now ready to enter the preview season leading to sidux 2007-03. This release is meant to check for potential regressions introduced by kernel 2.6.22 and the switch to libata for most parallel ATA chipsets (except VIA), to confirm kernel bugfixes introduced over the last few weeks and to test serious changes in sidux's 2nd live boot stage and other sidux core packages. As usual the preview ships only as kde-lite variant, featuring a small (430 MB), but fully functional KDE based package list, to ease up testing and xdelta uploads." Read the full release announcement for further details. Download: sidux-2007-03...pre1-kde-lite.iso (428MB, MD5), sidux64-2007-03...pre1-kde-lite.iso (436MB, MD5).

Skolelinux 3.0 "Terra" is available for free download: "This is a community release with comprehensive support from regional and national projects in Germany, Spain, France, Greece and Norway. The Skolelinux project is now a part of Debian under the name Debian-Edu. Several other projects have made additional functionality to Skolelinux tailored for national needs. Skolelinux now supports more than 50 countries. What's new in Skolelinux 3.0: based on Debian 4.0 "etch" and therefore compatible to LSB 3.1, using kernel 2.6.18 and KDE 3.5.5..." Read the release announcement for full details. Download: debian-edu-etch...3.0r0.iso (4,475MB, MD5). Terra is ready - "Now we celebrate, and start working on 3.0r1 and the Lenny based version."

Barry Kauler just announced the release of Puppy Linux 2.17: "Another wonderful new Puppy! The 'standard' release is puppy-2.17-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso live-CD and is 82.6MB. There is one thing that stands out from reading the release notes, and that is the major advances with hardware support -- which astounds even me, considering that version 2.16 was released barely 2 months ago. Yes, everything listed below is in that 82.6MB!" Read the announcement of new features and release notes here, and the Puppy website for further information. Download: puppy-2.17-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso (82.7MB, MD5).

Sarah Hobbs announced the third alpha release (also known as "Tribe 3") of Ubuntu 7.10: "Tribe 3 is the third in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Gutsy development cycle. The Tribe images are known to be reasonably free of show-stopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Gutsy... Another set of new features landed in Tribe 3, and are ready for large-scale testing. Please refer to the following web pages for details..." See the complete release announcement. Download (MD5): gutsy-desktop-i386.iso (693MB), gutsy-desktop-amd64.iso (698MB). Also released: the third alpha of Kubuntu (see features), Edubuntu and Xubuntu (see features) 7.10.

After the distribution project manager change and the launching of the new news website, the sixth alpha release of openSUSE 10.3 was out: "Important Changes Since Alpha5: Linux 2.6.22; libzypp 3.11.8; gcc 4.2; Continued splitting of packages to reduce size; Introduction of x86_64 CDs for both KDE and GNOME. This is a first alpha release containing the new refactored libzypp software management library. The goal was to deliver a working version for this alpha, so expect rough edges, unusual slowdown and behavior, for example YaST integration is really alpha quality. All bug reports are very welcome." Here is the full release announcement. A complete set of CD and DVD images are available for download either via BitTorrent or from these FTP/HTTP mirrors; here are two quick links to the new single-CD installation images (MD5): openSUSE-10.3-Alpha6-GNOME-i386.iso (671MB), openSUSE-10.3-Alpha6-KDE-i386.iso (690MB).

The Slackintosh-team has announced the release of Slackintosh 12.0, an unofficial port of Slackware Linux to Apple's PowerPC computers: "We are proud to announce that Slackintosh 12.0 has been released! Slackintosh 12.0 includes Linux 2.6.21.5, glibc 2.5 (with tls + epoll!), KDE 3.5.7 and much more... Checkout 12.0/README.TXT for Release-Notes / Upgrade instructions. Note to people still running Slackintosh 10.2: Please upgrade to 11.0 or 12.0! Slackintosh 10.2 is now obsolete. We will not provide security patches for 10.2." Read the brief release announcement for more information. Download: slackintosh-12.0-dvd.iso (3,936MB, MD5). Also available: via BitTorrent.

Petter Reinholdtsen announced the fifth release candidate of Skolelinux 3.0, a distribution also known as Debian-Edu Etch: "This is the fifth release candidate of debian-edu etch. After the release of rc4 there have been some new reports about critical bugs which were unknown before. Thanks to this testing there have also been fixes and changes made since rc4. Because of that, we like to present one more and hopefully the last release candidate. With this common test ground, we would like to ask you for doing all kind of final testing." See the release announcement for full details. Download: debian-edu-etch...rc5.iso (4,472MB, MD5).

IPCop Firewall, a distribution for protecting the network it is installed on, has been updated to version 1.4.16: "This release fixes some bugs, update glibc, Net::DNS and capi for security reasons. Upgraded packages are squid, snort, e100, r1000... As usual, this version can be installed as an update from previous v1.4.x versions or with a ready-to-go ISO or usb bootable images or pxe for a fresh install. Files are available on 'IPCop' package at Sourceforge." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details. Download: ipcop-1.4.16-install-cd.i386.iso (46.1MB, MD5).

Robert Shingledecker has announced Damn Small Linux 4.0 Alpha1: "This is a very different version of DSL. It is based on the following wish list as expressed in the forums: New 2.4.34 kernel; Easier to use user interface; A real desktop framework; Drag-N-Drop capability; Better and more flexible file associations; Closer coupling of the icons and file manager; Document centric capability; Optional menu-less capability; More intuitive interface to MyDSL extensions... You should test separately from existing installations of DSL." Here is the full release announcement. Download: dsl-4.0_alpha1.iso (49.4MB, MD5).

Paul Sherman has announced the release of Absolute Linux 12.0, a light-weight variant of Slackware Linux using the IceWM window manager: "This is Slackware 12.0 modification. Features kernel 2.6.21.5 (smp) and implements auto-mounting capabilities for devices and media. Updates to Hal and DevTray installation since last release. 586 is NOT supported for now, so don't try to load on a Pentium I or a k6-2 processor. Devices are not actually mounted automatically -- their icons appear in a panel BELOW the taskbar. When you want to look, click the arrow on the right of the taskbar, that bar will slide off to the right, and the devices listed by DevTray appear on the lower panel." Read the brief release announcement and get the package list on the project's download page. Get the zipped CD image from here: absolute_12.0.zip (669MB, MD5).

Iuri Stanchev has announced the release of NetSecL 2.1, a security-focused distribution based on Slackware Linux: "NetSecL 2.1 introduces GCC with Stack Smashing Protection, this increases the security of the compiled packages (i486_64). More than 250 Package Updates. Most networking packages are now i486_64 packages. This release fixes some unnoticed bugs in 2.0 version. Hardware recognition data were updated to the latest available. Enjoy NetSecL 2.1." Read the brief release announcement and the changelog. Download: netsecl-2.1-cd1.iso (627MB, MD5), netsecl-2.1-cd2.iso (485MB, MD5).

Love Sabayon Linux and want to use it for working purpose but are not interested at all in games or desktop acceleration? Then try its "Business Edition". "Sabayon has prepared for you a fast, cheap and stable solution for every "office needs" you might have! INFO/FEATURES: Optimized Server profile; Kernel 2.6.22 Sabayon Linux Powered; Stable branch for almost all packages; Wpa_supplicant compiled with a better support for mac80211; Latest madwifi driver; Latest Sabayon Installer; Latest Ati-drivers; Latest Nvidia-drivers; Fast installation speed; Package Selection on install time; Really fast working live environment; Easy firewall management with Kmyfirewall." Read the press release for further details. Download the DVD images via BitTorrent: Sabayon-x86-1.0-BusinessEdition.iso (1,739MB), Sabayon-x86_64-1.0-BusinessEdition.iso (2,100MB).

Some developers and readers may have noticed that the distribution-specific pages are not updated for the moment to follow up a few very recent releases. That's because Ladislav Bodnar is currently on vacation. Consequently, we invite Susan Linton from tuxmachines to author this issue of DistroWatch Weekly:

A new beta release of FreeNAS, a tiny FreeBSD-based operating system providing free Network Attached Storage (NAS) services, is now available. From the release notes and changelog: "Lot's of things has been changed in this release. The proprietary boot sequence has been replaced by the FreeBSD used sys5init system. Due this it is possible to start/stop and restart all services using the console (e.g. /etc/rc.d/lighttpd stop or /etc/rc.d/samba restart). Another change is that Samba shares has to be defined by the user..." Download: FreeNAS-i386-liveCD-0.685b.iso (41.7MB).

Technalign has announced the second beta release of Pioneer Explorer 1.0, a desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu: "Beta 2 is a self-booting Live CD originally based on Kubuntu that allows you to test the operating system before installation. Explorer includes additional wireless support out of the box for ease of use with many wireless adapters. The new Beta also provides a kernel with additional tweaks. The highlight of the Beta 2 release includes additional changes to the Technalign repositories including Commercial, Backports, and Network Security (Crypto)..." See the press release for more details. Download: Explorer-1.0-Beta2-i386.iso (737MB, MD5).

The Ark Linux team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Ark Linux 2007.1-rc1: "There have been many changes since the previous 2006.1 release - all components have been updated to current versions (for example, Ark Linux 2007.1-rc1 includes KDE 3.5.7, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1, Linux 2.6.22-rc6, glibc 2.6, and has been built completely with gcc 4.2), hardware detection has been improved, many new drivers are included, and many additional applications and games have been added to our software repository." Find more in the official release announcement. Download the installation and live CDs (MD5): arklinux-2007.1-rc1.iso (694MB, available via BitTorrent), arklinux-live-2007.1-rc1.iso (636MB, also available via BitTorrent).

Helix is a KNOPPIX-based live CD with a large collection of tools dedicated to incident response and forensics. Drew Fahey has announced the availability of version 1.9: "Version 1.9 has been officially released. This is not a large update due to work going on for version 2.0 but many of the tools have been updated. NTFS-3g has been update to 1.710, Sleuthkit 2.09, Autopsy 2.08, Scalpel 1.60 to carve data, EnCase Linen 6.01, AFFlib 2.3.0 and libewf-20070512 for image acquisition. The Kernel was also updated to 2.6.18.7. In addition several tools on the Live Windows side have been updated/added: WFT 3.01 and Nigilant32." Read the announcement and changelog for more information. Download: Helix_V1.9-07-13-2007.iso (701 MB, MD5).